asses of Meguro for the musical suzu-mushi, the hataori, and
the kirigirisu. These he incarcerated in fairy cages of plaited straw,
threaded the cages into great hornets' nests that dangled from the two
ends of his creaking shoulder-pole, and started toward the city in a
perfect storm of insect music. The noise moved with him like a cloud.
It formed, as it were, a penumbra of fine shrilling, and could be heard
for many streets in advance. This itinerant merchant was commissioned to
haunt the Kano gate until impatience or curiosity should fling it wide
for him. Then, after having coaxed old Mata into making a purchase, he
was to engage her in conversation, and extract all the domestic
information he could. Unfortunately for the acquisition of paltry news,
it was Ume-ko, not Mata, who came out to purchase. The seller, watching
those slim, white fingers as they fluttered among his cages, the delicate
ear bent to mark some special chime, forgot the words of Ando Uchida,
otherwise, Mr. S. Yetan, of Chikuzen, forgot everything, indeed, but the
beauty of the girlish face near him.

He left the house in a dream more dense than the multitudinous clamor of
his burden. "Alas!" thought Katsuo, as he stumbled along, unheeding the
beckoning hands of mothers, or the arresting cries of children in many
gateways, "Had I been born a samurai of old, and she an humble maiden!
Even as an Eta, an outcast, would I have loved and sought her. Now in
this life I am doomed to catch insects and to sell them. Perhaps in my
coming rebirth, if I am honest and do not tell to the ignorant that a
common mimi is a silver-voiced hataorimushi,--perhaps----"

Ando's third envoy was chosen with more thoughtful care. This time it
was none other than a young priest from the temple of Fudo-Bosatsu in
Meguro. He was an acolyte sent forth with bowl and staff to beg for aid
in certain temple repairs. Ando promised a generous donation in return
for information concerning the Kano family. Being assured that the
motive for this curiosity was benevolent rather than mischievous, the
priest consented to make the attempt. He reached the Kano gate at noon,
within a few days after Tatsu's arrival. Mata opened to his call. Being
herself a Protestant, opposed to the ancient orders and their methods,
she gave him but a chilly welcome. Her interest was aroused, however, in
spite of herself, by the fact that he neither chanted his refrain of
supplication nor ex