f the seller. Look!"

He unrolled a silk-scroll and showed me the figure of a girl in pale
blue and grey crepe, carrying in her arms a bundle of clothes that, as
the tub behind her showed, had just been washed. A dark-blue
handkerchief was thrown lightly over the left forearm, shoulder, and
neck, ready to tie up the clothes when the bundle should be put down.
The flesh of the right arm showed through the thin drapery of the
sleeve. The right hand merely steadied the bundle from above; the left
gripped it firmly from below. Through the stiff blue-black hair showed
the outline of the left ear.

That there was enormous elaboration in the picture, from the
ornamentation of the hair-pins to the graining of the clogs, did not
strike me till after the first five minutes, when I had sufficiently
admired the certainty of touch.

"Recollect there is no room for error in painting on silk," said the
proud possessor. "The line must stand under any circumstances. All that
is possible before painting is a little dotting with charcoal, which is
rubbed off with a feather-brush. Did he know anything about drapery or
colour or the shape of a woman? Is there any one who could teach him
more if he were alive to-day?"

Then we went to Nikko.

No. XIX

THE LEGEND OF NIKKO FORD AND THE STORY OF THE AVOIDANCE OF MISFORTUNE.

A rose-red city, half as old as Time.

Five hours in the train took us to the beginning of a 'rickshaw journey
of twenty-five miles. The guide unearthed an aged cart on Japanese
lines, and seduced us into it by promises of speed and comfort beyond
anything that a 'rickshaw could offer. Never go to Nikko in a cart. The
town of departure is full of pack-ponies who are not used to it, and
every third animal tries to get a kick at his friends in the shafts.
This renders progress sufficiently exciting till the bumpsomeness of the
road quenches all emotions save one. Nikko is reached through one avenue
of _cryptomerias_--cypress-like trees eighty feet high, with red or dull
silver trunks and hearse-plume foliage of darkest green. When I say one
avenue, I mean one continuous avenue twenty-five miles long, the trees
so close to each other throughout that their roots interlace and form a
wall of wood on either side of the sunken road. Where it was necessary
to make a village along the line of march,--that is to say once every
two or three miles,--a few of the giants had been wrenched out--as teeth
are wrenched