They had gone back into the open, turning again toward a course to the southward; bearing a little to the west, along the well-travelled roadway that led directly into the main pass over the mountains through Mino, for Mikawa, Ieyasu’s domain; where stood Okazaki castle, his birthplace and inherited fortress. To this place, enchanted as it now seemed to her, Yodogima would have gone a willing slave to its master’s caprice and otherwise still a devoted helpmeet in the rendering of an established and expansive, if cruelly submissive order.

It was yet dark, but the bettos pattered along at a lively gait; a trifling advance promised in their wage had allayed any misgivings that they might have had as to a possible change of leaders; and glad, moreover, of the less burdensome or hazardous going now confronting them, their progress became as rapid as the escape seemed propitious.

The way lay through a richly cultivated and thickly inhabited valley, bespeaking a prosperous and friendly environment. Yet it was dark, and these things were not discernible—no lingering light shone forth, nor belated dweller accidentally peered—save for an occasional howling round some dismal corner, or the hard, smooth-worn curbstone’s welcome reply. Yodogima leaned restfully back in the chair; Jokoin, her youngest sister, yet innocent and fair, had gone to sleep, contentedly: only Esyo, next older, with cold, penetrating look, and rigid, exacting manner, sat upright, wrangling with this one or that the probable outcome of such daring do.

“You are a winsome, headstrong thing,” threatened she, of Yodogima, as their chairs came close together, in a broadened stretch of road, where the bettos were wont to gossip in venturesome consultation about a possible rest. “Only for you, I might have been permitted—as any true daughter should be—a more logical, if not less unbecoming, situation. Here it is, dead of night; and Shibata, a lord daimyo’s whole bevy most uncomfortably trudging through goodness knows what; and all to no purpose, I am sure.”

“Be quiet, Esyo,” commanded Yodogima, not the least bit impatient; “you shall soon enough find it convenient, if not agreeable, to discuss till content some of the urgencies: the proprieties had best take care of themselves—for the present, it would appear, to your faithful, if unworthy, sister.”

“Who said that you are unworthy? Come, Yodogima; don’t be unreasonable.”

“Please do not get excited.”

“I am not excited, I tell you; and had you my temper you should not have fallen in love with that Ieyasu; nor would you have so forgotten yourself as to wholly disregard better discretion by clinging to him—why didn’t you tell father it was a myth, the face a mysticism, and his decision most unreasonably mystifying—”

“Oh, sister; how you talk; in that case you shouldn’t have been here, or anywhere; and, Ieyasu is very real.”

“Quite like all the rest: a pack of them—all of them, every one like the other.”

“And I am not so sure but Esyo, herself, might prove to be the best quarry among us: take care that you do not give me further cause, to suspect as much; more I dare not.”

They had travelled a long time, it seemed months to Yodogima, when, without warning, in the dawning light, their leader, with uncovered face, thrust his head into Yodogima’s presence, cautioning her:

“Trust me, Yodogima; I have given proper instructions to the bettos; I must now leave you.”

Yodogima drew back with alarm, too frightened to make answer or to comprehend him; it was Katsutoya she recognized.

Thus leaving his charge to fare as best they might, under the instructions given, Katsutoya sped on, into the distance, purposing to reach and advise Ieyasu if possible of what he had done toward saving Yodogima from the clutches of Hideyoshi; who in parting with Ieyasu had done as promised: returned the bundle to where Ieyasu had found it. Sakuma, however, did not reappear as expected; instead there came another, also disguised; and equally taken aback, as well as penetrating, both Hideyoshi and Katsutoya for once blundered expediency to gain some sort of intended advantage.

Katsutoya, therefore, and not Sakuma, had saved the princess, and with all his energies now sought to advise Ieyasu, in whose service he believed he would fare safer and welcome. It proved to be a long and a hard run to Fuchu, where Ieyasu yet remained, waiting. Squads of Hideyoshi’s troops and scouts already infested the country, and the by-ways and brush-covered hills proved hard of traversing, yet Katsutoya faithfully and hopefully pressed on, reaching his destination exhausted and sore.

“What brings you here, and at this time?” inquired Ieyasu, coldly; when confronted by the messenger, eager and positive.

“I would do you a service, though I am but an outcast, as you see,” replied Katsutoya, earnestly.

“As others have done—more discreetly. Go. I have no confidence in pretence. Ieyasu shall, hereafter, select his own assistants. Sakuma, at least, taught me a lesson.”

“And Katsutoya shall teach you a better one, though you do refuse me. Hideyoshi shall have hunted out and claimed your Yodogima long before Ieyasu has made up his mind to do more than wait. And to show you that Katsutoya is your friend and not a rival, as you have it, I lend you my disguise, that you may find a way home; there to pander to jealousy and defend your life. Greatness lies rather in aggressiveness. Good-day, sir.”

So saying, Katsutoya disappeared, before the astonished Ieyasu had fairly recovered his breath. Those words, however, burned deeply into his consciousness, and he would have run after his supposed rival had he dared venture, undisguised, beyond the confines of his friend Maeda’s protection.

Ieyasu knew only too well that he had been tricked by Hideyoshi; that his recent bravado and promised alliance had been feigned for immediate effect; that his troops were at that very moment scouring the country, he himself fully believed without even a suggestion from Katsutoya or anyone else; that his own neck were in danger he was wholly aware—from political motives, however, and not as a result of any clashing of love interests; in his dull mind, Hideyoshi had no more thought of taking a defeated daimyo’s daughter to himself than Katsutoya had of befriending a successful rival. His household seemed already full enough.

“Hideyoshi in love, and a wife and some three hundred, now? Bosh!” muttered he, to himself, though donning the disguise and preparing for flight. “Thanks, however, to Hideyoshi’s cleverness, we shall see no more of Katsutoya, vain wretch—Yodogima is still alive; he just as well as said so, and the gods shall see that Ieyasu gets his due. I can wait, yet go I must.”

Ieyasu set out unattended and forlorn; while the bettos were landing Yodogima, hopeful if not happy, at an appointed tea-house in the rugged mountains capping an upper arm of the valley through which they had climbed. Here, Katsutoya had directed her to remain; it was secluded, and not far distant from the main highway over which her lover must make his exit, through the otherwise almost impassable range.

It had grown warmer with the rising sun and a sheltered environment, yet Yodogima waxed the more eager and became less tolerant. She knew the locality well enough, but somehow could not bring herself to believe Katsutoya bent upon anything but downright betrayal. They were sitting in the open, at the rear of a large room, on the second floor, overlooking a deep gorge below and the broad valley farther on in the distance. Jokoin chafed under the restraint, and Esyo scolded.

“I can see no harm in going below, and into a public room—we are daughters of Shibata, and there is a man down there; I hear his voice.”

“Jokoin! What is to be done with you? We are alone, and outcasts—” began Esyo, half intended for Yodogima.

“The more the need of cultivating someone’s friendship,” retorted Jokoin.

“But we have no means of an introduction, and do not know that it is a gentleman.”

“Let us forget form: I hear a sword rattling.”

Yodogima made neither protest nor comment; she was content to let Esyo wrestle it out with Jokoin, whose good sense she believed quite the better of her indiscretion. Therefore, when Jokoin finally led down the stairs, with Esyo close after, their eldest sister, sitting back upon the soft-matted floor, turned her thoughts far away, and to things beyond the staid comprehension of the one or above the emotional reach of the other.

All these things around her, men and women had called real; but to her they seemed very unreal. She had been brought into the world and set down among them without a voice or a hand in the making. Reality, this? Far from it. Why, the very food they ate was not what it seemed, the roof overhead but a creation, and for all she knew her own clothing might be the merest makeshift as against a real, a truly penetrating eye. These, then, were but resulting products, and of what? Ideality?

Her own soul cried aloud for something better, purer, and more certain than all these sordid trappings of man’s little endeavor. There must be an ethereal, a state transfixed—of earth, but infinite—and could she only resolve its quantity the elements had afforded a way; the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth and all that there is upon it were but the atoms of an endless progression, fixed and apportioned by the same compelling, abiding agency that had touched her and bound her when confronted with a natural and unhindered attraction.

The mountain-top hung high above: she wanted to get there, to some place far away from vulgar witnessing, and there seek communion with the spirit that seemed so near yet nowhere within reach. Man had brought forth nothing not deceptive, failed utterly of conception—a province wholly within the grasp of woman, the more her reason.

Having at last resolved to press the quest alone and untrammelled, Yodogima ran out and along the narrow veranda to the long, smooth-worn steps that wound up and around the mountain-side to its summit in the background. The climb was not a hard one, and as she went she remarked the usefulness to which the hand of man really had been put. Yet there seemed a want of guidance, and upon arriving at a deserted temple the poverty of his understanding became the more painfully apparent.

History recorded ages and cycles of crowding and striving and yet how much had been done to show that anything more than nature had inhabited this earth? A few houses, here and there a crooked, stumbling highway, now and then a ship at sea, all temporary, and so little of beauty! Really it seemed a pity that so much good rich blood and vain high sounding words had been expended upon nothing more than barely living: then, approaching the summit, nearer and nearer, his track or touch began to disappear, presently became extinct, and no such delight had entered her heart, save once before. Heaven, limitless and real, encouraging the utmost within her, seemed a thing of consequence; and the earth receding and vanishing and lost, with its humdrum and vanity but an atom engulfed, were as if a memory-disappearing and forgotten over against the invisible grind of a molten, seething yesterday.

Sitting down upon a clean-washed, sun-dried and nature-fashioned rock, there waiting—no vulgar thing or mad intellect had touched it—Yodogima looked all around, then fastened her eyes upon a blushing bluebell that tenderly upturned its sweetened lips in token of the message she sought. A cuckoo flew also there, perching itself in defiance: Yodogima whispered:

“Sing to me.”

The bird listed mute and wanting.

“I’ll help the cuckoo to sing,” replied she, vouchsafing to waft her melodies on the light, over-sounding air.

The little thing answered her, only as it could—but out of its song there arose the voice of—

The bush rattled at her back, and springing to her feet, and turning quickly round, Yodogima shrieked:

“Hideyoshi!”