As the time passed and no word came from his father Shibusawa began to realise the full force of his presentiments. He had not the power to go to his parent’s relief, and his only hope lay in his ability to guard against still further and greater disaster to the family. He fully realised his responsibility, and undertook to acquit himself with due respect to the inevitable and a proper regard for truth.

The aged daimyo had stood patiently the journey and borne up well under the charge until reaching the Tokyo dungeon, into which he was thrust without even a chance to meet his accusers, much less any opportunity to hear or explain.

The foul place which held him prisoner lay in a damp, dark hole in the cellar, underneath the very building in which his son-in-law swayed the sceptre of his vast power; and though many of these gruesome cells, each holding its captive, they were so constructed, with huge walls and peephole grates, that no person could be seen or a voice heard from one to the other. Not a rat or uncanny thing could get in there, nor was there room to lie down on the cold, hard tramped floor. As Maido entered his last hope vanished; he knew too well his doom. He could not eat the miserable food each day silently pushed in at the bare opening high up in the narrow door, nor could he sleep, but sank down and prayed. He asked his god only that his son escape.

With Maido thus caged below, Ikamon busied himself above; he believed in doing the thing once he had made up his mind. The consequences could and would better adjust themselves afterwards. He had made his way by bold and unflinching strokes, and he reasoned that a change of policy now would certainly bring, if it did not merit, disaster; therefore he hastened the trial, and concluded the testimony after the first ordeal.

The morning came on gloomy, and a murky atmosphere hung over the city like a pall. Ikamon rose early and hurried to his great seat in the hall of state; then hastily donned the gown of justice and took up the cudgel of vengeance. There was no one to dispute his right, no one to stay the hand which had now turned to fiend, and he fiercely called out:

“Jigokumon!”

“Sayo, most honourable high minister,” answered the doughty keeper as he came trudging forward, bowing and attesting.

“Have the prisoners confessed?” asked the mighty, speaking purposely in the plural.

“No; your most honourable perfectness, they have not had—they have not.”

“Then proceed with the ordeal; the court cannot be so trifled with.”

The tormentor withdrew. He knew where to begin his awful work, for Ikamon had long before told him that, and cautioned him about the victims. He groped his way below and fumbled at the keyhole. The great iron lock creaked as he threw back the rusty bolt. He hauled and shoved at the grimy door, and the filthy den belched its nasty air. Two vile lubbers fell upon the faint and helpless daimyo, roughly dragging him out. He made no resistance, nor did he cry aloud. They hurried him through the long, dark, narrow passage to a muffled exit. The door closed behind them, and Jigokumon thrust a lighted torch in Maido’s face, and snarled:

“What now, you hinin?”[19]

Maido did not speak; he was beyond that. The light blinded him and terror overcame him. He glanced pitifully at Ikamon’s ruffians, then sank back unable to comprehend. His torturer sneered as he snuffed the light and hissed:

“To the torments!”

Throwing open the outer, or last door, the two flunkeys thrust the lord daimyo forward upon the hot cinders covering the earthen floor. Jigokumon remained outside; it was too awful in there, even for him. They hustled Maido to the centre of the room and lashed his hands at his back with one end of a cord which hung loosely from a beam overhead. After securely tying his feet together the two heavy men slowly pulled at the loose end of the cord from above; whereat the victim’s arms fairly twisted in the sockets and, with downcast face, his limbs hung limp. Maido groaned, then nerved himself to the ordeal.

Having raised him a trifle from the ground, the monsters slid beneath his bare feet a pot of burning coals from which the lid was stripped. The sulphur pots were lit, and the red light flashed—the fiends disappeared, and the fumes rose, enveloping the suffering patriot. He uttered no sound, but looked upon the hellish scene with stoic indifference. Perhaps he thought of man’s sphere as compared with God’s. Possibly he contrasted the good with the evil of life, as lived on earth; and he may have glimpsed at a truer way, the one that heaven foretells.

He had hung there only a few minutes—it seemed to him an age—before his feet shrivelled and blackened, while the fire crackled and sizzled around them. As his contorted body dangled in the air, his face upturned, he momentarily saw, peering through a glass-covered peephole, his trusted son-in-law, Ikamon; then a smile crossed his face and he lost all consciousness.

While Maido was being pushed into the cellar of torture, Ikamon had seated himself in the judge’s cubby-hole, which adjoined the chamber of testimony, permitting a close watch of the victim and a taking of the confession, if such were made, without suffering the annoyance of the fiery fumes within. He looked only once, and fate revealed the sickly smile, whereat he quickly drew the curtain, and turning, shouted:

“Jigokumon; Jigokumon; relieve the victim; the confession is made!”

Suddenly the fires were extinguished, and Maido, more dead than alive, was restored to the damp cell from which he had been taken. He did not recover consciousness for a long time, but when he had done so he suffered such intense pain that he begged the dumb walls for death.

He had, however, long to wait, for he had been left there to suffer all but that. Ikamon, though, gauged well the time, and before too late pronounced the sentence: Maido, together with all the rest, was led forth into the wilderness of Musashijamoku, where they were scattered about and permitted, one after another, the right of harakiri. There overhung the marsh land a mist, and the murky wet clung to the smooth, round bamboos, echoing a grave-like sound as each pronounced the parting word. All excepting Maido had gone, and it now came his turn. He sat there in the cold wet with his snarled and decaying limbs crossed under him. His face was upturned and in his right hand he held the sharpened steel. He had thanked his accusers for respecting his right to die as became his rank, and now thought only of his own, his son. Out of the gloom of the swamp there arose the sound of the executioner’s voice; it said only:

“Maido.”

The blow was struck, and his head dropped forward. Then there came from the still forest a silent, anxious step, and trembling voice, saying:

“It is too late! He is gone!”

She bent over him and whispered:

“It is I.”

He raised his face to hers and answered:

“Takara!”

Then she cried:

“It was not I! Oh, honourable father, it was not I that did it!”

Maido said:

“I understand. It was he who stole it. You are my deliverer. You have brought me news.”

“And he knows not your fate, but is not deceived. He lives and I am still his wife. Shibusawa will vindicate his father’s name. I swear it!”

Takara straightened up and the fire flashed from her eyes, as her words pierced the dull air around her.

“It is well.”

These were the words with which Maido bade the world a last farewell, with which he forgave his traducers, and with which he welcomed death. He knew Takara’s power and believed in her sincerity. He was ready to die.

Maido fell face downward, and Takara bathed her handkerchief in the blood that flowed from the wound at his waist; then wrapping up the stained symbol, hid it in the folds of her obi;[20] she had taken the oath that is—until avenged.

Takara stood there as if held by some wild, untrained spirit; she stared this way and that, then a low cry escaped her lips. The haunted woods around mocked her, and trembling she listened. Not until now had she realised the awful situation or divined the peril of her strange adventure. She turned to go, but a rough officer seized and quickly led her away.

Upon learning of the wholesale arrests, as they were being made, Takara had missed from its place of keeping the document which Maido had intrusted to her care. She recalled Daikomitsu’s nervousness at the time of her reading it, his chance of seeing her hide it away, and his sudden departure from the garden, and thought of his strange actions afterwards; then she concluded—not reasoned—that these peculiar circumstances bore some connection with the unexpected seizure of so many of the daimyos who were present at the meeting. No one knew Daikomitsu better than Takara, and while she believed him a coward of little consequence she considered him capable of the meanest villainy—in the prospect of gain without detection. She did not stop to inquire about a motive, though she might have discovered one lurking between his repeated trips to Tokyo and the few unguarded disclosures made to her in the course of their long acquaintance.

Divining the clue to Ikamon’s source of information the mikado’s daughter had set out post-haste to frustrate his designs. She first called upon Kido, but he proved to be powerless, in fact was only too glad to have escaped. Then she went to Kanazawa, and there was horrified to learn that her beloved father-in-law too had been snatched away. She did not stop to right herself with Shibusawa, who now charged her with being the accomplice of Daikomitsu—the one person more than any other interested in the downfall of the house of Maido—and when he finally dismissed her, saying:

“There is now nothing to merit even our friendship,” she stooped with sorrow and answered:

“It is true. I am justly served.”

Though their meeting had been a pitiful one, Takara did not break down under the weight of his accusation nor did she weaken in her purpose. She had discovered still greater reason for her activities, and incidentally learned that Shibusawa was fully prepared to withstand any further assault upon his stronghold. She, therefore, left him and resumed her journeying toward Tokyo.

At her arrival there the whole populace seemed in an uproar, the excited mobs everywhere crying:

“To the swamp! to the wilderness! The yamabushi![21] the vile! the disloyal! Asano! Kurano! Maido! Let their bodies be ripped!”

Takara shuddered when she heard the fierce rabble, and her heart poured out its measure. Divining Maido’s last thought, she hastened forward in the hope of reaching him before too late to deliver the word that would give him peace before death. Leaving her carriers at the wood side, she clambered through the mire and under the big trees. Time and again the weird, painful sound grated upon her ears as one after another of the victims said his last:

“Sayonari.”

She struggled on, not knowing which way to go, until she had come within hearing of the mysterious voice of the hidden executioner, who called in rotation the names of those that were performing the honoured rite. She stole after him, and upon calling the name of her lord and master’s father she rushed ahead in time to greet him with the assurance that was to him a recompense for all his trials and sorrow.

Fortunately Takara did not see the sickening evidence of his prolonged and terrible suffering; his abused limbs had sunken into the mire, and she saw only that he had died the death of honour. And she felt happy that she had reached him in time, though Shibusawa knew not that she carried the message. Maido’s joy rewarded her.

The luckless woman’s captor rudely hurried her through the woods, and departing the scene she did not look back. She made no resistance, but obeyed the eager fellow’s command; nor did she think much of the consequences. She tramped along, and as they went the air grew more stifling. The hot breath of the forest rose and choked them, and upon reaching the open they found it there, too, suffocating.

Continuing toward the city, they presently reached the outskirts exhausted—the keeper more than his prisoner—and climbing to the top of a low hill halted for the night. Here there stood a temple, and near by a small tea house in which he undertook, because of his inability to go farther, to hold her captive; proposing to rest until morning, proceeding then to Ikamon’s dungeon, the intended place of her imprisonment. Having securely lodged the hopeful woman in a small detached room, the ponderous captor refreshed himself and lay down in front to keep guard.

The humbled daughter of a proud royalty had failed in her mission, yet in that failure fate had revealed to her the sweetest rite, the consoling of a dying friend. Maido’s lips had been sealed, but in that there arose a fresh desire, and had Takara been privileged to meet the living as she had parted with the dead, she would gladly have resigned herself to her doom. The new responsibility made imperative to her the seemingly hopeless task of again reaching Shibusawa.