e head, with its wide crown of inky hair! Each motion of the
slow-strolling form in its clinging robes was a separate loveliness.

Kano drew a long sigh. He could not blind himself to Tatsu's savagery.
This was not the sort of husband that Ume had a right to expect from
her father's choice,--a youth not only penniless, and without family
name, but in himself unusual, strange, with look, voice, gesture,
coloring each a clear contrast to the men that Ume-ko had seen. He
could not bear the thought of her unhappiness, and yet, at any
sacrifice, Tatsu must be kept an inmate of their home.

The girl had stopped beside the sunlit pond, leaning far over. She did
not seem to note the clustering carp at all, but rather dwell upon her
own image, twisted and shot through with the gold of their darting
bodies. Now, with dragging feet she went to the moon-viewing hill,
remaining in the shadow of it, and pausing for long thought. Her eyes
were on the cliff, now raised to the camphor tree. Suddenly she
shivered and hid her face. What was the tumult of that ignorant young
breast?

The old man rose and went to an inner room where hung the Butsudan, the
shrine. He stood gazing upon the ihai of his wife. His lips moved,
but the breath so lightly issued that the flame on the altar did not
stir. "She, our one child, has come now to the borders of that
woman-land where I cannot go with her," he was saying. "Thou art the
soul to guide, and give her happiness, thou, the dear one of my
life,--the dead young mother who has never really died!" He folded his
hands now, and bowed his head. The small flame leaned to him. "Namu
Amida Butsu, Namu Amid a Butsu," murmured the old man.

Out by the hill, a butterfly, snow white, rested a moment on the young
girl's hair. She was again looking at the cliff, and did not notice it.

V

Ando Uchida, from his green seclusion among the bamboo groves of Meguro,
sent, from time to time, a scout into the city. First an ordinary hotel
kotsukai or man-servant was employed. This experiment proved costly as
well as futile. The kotsukai demanded large payment; and then the
creature's questions to Mata were of a nature so crude and undiplomatic
that they aroused instant suspicion, causing, indeed, the threat of a
dipper of scalding water.

The next messenger was an insect peddler, Katsuo Takanaka by name. It
was the part of this youth to search daily among the bamboo stems and
hillside gr