Presently the hillsides, far out over the noised-up city, rang with the bustle and cry of “To arms”. No patriot there, not a samurai’s mother, but thrilled with the joy and strengthened at the bidding of higher endeavor.

Only the mean, the weak, and the unpatriotic would question expediency; small men with little souls might buy to sell again; others of brawn, their minds a mirage, fashion the wares, drones and idlers drive and shout their wives and children to plant and draw—men and women, humans with a purpose and a promise higher and nobler than grubbing for food or haggling for exchange or bartering for gold served a usefulness, encouraged a hope, and pointed the way toward that rendering which make men large; the ideal portended a reality which bid them not, ever, stoop to sordid, useless gain.

The lines formed, and no more pleasing scene had come down through time or fancy; men with hardened muscle and bronzed arms, their eyes sparkling and step quickened, with spears levelled and cutlasses buckled on, tramped to time and listened with intent.

“Open the gates, and down with the bridge,” shouted the captain, as a hundred thousand brave troops turned their backs upon peace and stores to face the exigencies of uncertain warfare—an underling’s last sad gasp at fate and the godly’s only reach to greatness.

War—the one thing that makes man better than his neighbor, bridges the chasm between life and death, raises a hope superior within. War—the slogan of nature, and the handmaid of creation. War—the savior of mankind, at the cost of brute, stirred them as it had their fathers to superhuman, transcendent energy.

They marched past the shops—in which sycophants wrangled this and that; through the woods where cutters and hewers sweat or chewed; over the plains, amid sustenance born of fain indifference—into the mountains, lofty, grand and inspiring.

The roads ran smooth and easy up the long sloping ascent, they were builded and used, for a like purpose, long before Shibata’s rise had conjured sublimity’s ultimate pass. Presently sounds beyond echoed again the uncertainties of dame progress. The dizzy heights scaled measured accurately the cost of further effort. Ominous clouds darkened the way. Shibata at last lagged, and a fox leaped from the roadside.

“Gonroku! Gonroku!” whispered Shibata, springing from his chair and peering into darkness.

“Yes, father,” replied the son, a little surprised, but not altogether unconvinced.

“The enemy! Cannot you see them? They come in columns touching the seas: ranks receding—I cannot number them—reaching beyond the horizon. Katsutoya leads them.”

“Impossible,” shouted Sakuma. “On with the march.”

“Listen,” whispered Shibata, now white in the face and unsteady of foot.

“They do mock Sakuma,” ventured Gonroku, before the first echo had again resounded upon the still resonant air.

“Listen,” repeated Shibata, his eyes like fireballs in the dark.

“A thousand answers,” said Gonroku; now, too, almost convinced.

“You see phantoms, and Sakuma hearkens not to goblins. Old women and, I believe, some men still read disaster into the appearance of a fox—dogs, badgers, lizards, etc. If Katsutoya really be at Shizugataka, it is high time that we arrest him. And if Hideyoshi has been so reckless as to risk a host in one defense, so much the better for Shibata; the way shall have been cleared to Kyoto with a single stroke and—if I mistake not, Kyoto without Katsutoya would be quite as acceptable at least to a part of Kitanoshi as it should be with him—a phantom.”

“What means Sakuma, father?” inquired the son, perchance more intelligently than judiciously.

“Let him take his own proper command, and himself prove that prophecy is not blasphemy—by sending up, to this, a secure place, for you and me, the head of this ‘phantom,’ as he calls it.”

“Good,” responded Sakuma—and division again strengthened Hideyoshi’s position.

With calling at Nagahama, Hideyoshi had made easy the plan of turning an enemy’s ready contingent into a no less effective than willing instrument.

Katsutoya had never loved Yodogima, and out of promotion had conceived the idea also that Shibata, his benefactor’s purpose, were a hindrance rather than a help to his vainly imagined restoration. Further, this particular young princess, according to his nicely wrought notions, did not at all augur the fulfillment of an Ashikaga shogun’s well-reputed requirements—and Katsutoya’s dreams were already resplendent with all that had made his supposed ancestors of some three hundred years tolerable if not respectable.

“The bargain is a just one, Hideyoshi,” promised he, contemplatively. “Shibata’s daughter would serve better the necessities of a daimyo like yourself—Katsutoya shall have more the need of an humbler service; take her and welcome; but why risk my neck at the front? If you would serve me as shogun then secure me a man.”

“Just so. And nothing is safer or saner or sounder than self-made security—go against this man Sakuma; the rest are only women, fit to gobble.”

“Then it is gobble, gobble, and Shizugataka for me.”

“Perhaps. You know, though, that Hideyoshi is reputed, there.”

Katsutoya led his troops to the defense of Shizugataka, Hideyoshi’s outlying stronghold against Shibata’s well-worn approach; but no sooner had camp been struck than Sakuma hurled Shibata’s advance force against him. The battle raged, and Katsutoya wavered; surprise had overcome him, and defeat completed the rout. Sakuma would have followed up his success and gained Yodogima the head, not the hand, of Katsutoya had not Gonroku hailed him in the distance; Shibata had again seen the fox—saw Hideyoshi’s phalanx scaling the mountains to the left—and sent Gonroku to recall Sakuma that he might make haste to save Kitanoshi itself.

“O Jimmu; O Katsutoya; O Yodogima,” murmured Shibata, as Gonroku disappeared down the mountain side.

A forced march soon brought Gonroku’s reserves within knowing distance of Sakuma’s victorious division.

Katsutoya had recovered himself on the opposite side of Yodo lake. Sakuma grew impatient to take him, but Gonroku fired at the thought of a hireling’s success and balked at the proposal, denying even the identity of their enemy.

“It is Katsutoya, I tell you, and unless destroyed our very lives are in danger.”

“You err, Sakuma; and till you prove me wrong you shall command no more than a body guard.”

With only six men, seven including himself, Sakuma plunged through the reeds, once more into the heat of battle, and the fighting renewed now in desperation; Gonroku looked on with a smile. Valiant men gathered round and Sakuma spied their bogie hero. Cutting and slashing his way thither, at last the coveted thing dropped helpless at a stroke; but lo! was it only a fox’s head?

Katsutoya had flown, and the phantom army no longer a reality Sakuma gathered up the gruesome thing and hastening thither bowed humbly as tradition demanded; Gonroku sent him away, to wander in the woods, as others had done before, a ronin and a failure—Hideyoshi thus chanced upon him.

“What have you there, Sakuma?”

Sakuma hid his face.

“Speak, Sakuma; a friend asks it.”

Could this man, a daimyo, so degrade himself as to speak to an eta (outcast)? His appearance disclosed the cast, and Hideyoshi had eyes, it was claimed, in the back of his head. He must answer, yet dare not utter a word in the presence of a superior; custom forbade it, and he had just learned a lesson. No; a subterfuge must serve him: so thinking, Sakuma dropped his burden, and slunk back out of sight.

“Ha, ha,” muttered Hideyoshi; “a fox’s head—I’ll warrant he thought it Katsutoya’s—reputed son of a foxier monk than Nobunaga or Christianity has yet outwitted.

“Here, Junkei. Exchange this for the real—no; he’s safe, atop Hiyeisan, I’ll warrant; a like one will do. Understand me?”

“Yes, honorable master.”

The likeness was soon enough returned—there were plenty of them in the ranks—and Sakuma was again brought in.

“Sakuma, you think yourself unfit to address even me: look at this,” commanded Hideyoshi, holding up to view the bloodless face.

Sakuma obeyed; there was no law or privilege that he knew depriving him of so flagrant a sight. All the joys of heaven could not have won him more; it seemed to be the head he really coveted.

“I am your servant,” promised he, and the two of them bowed respectfully.

“Then carry this thing forthwith to Shibata; it shall be the means no less of his undoing than of Yodogima’s making—”

“Of Ieyasu—a plaything.”