“Yes; it is he—and you need not start at my presence. I hear that I am, by some, called vulgar; by many, said to be cruel; I know only that I am human: that the touch of your garment would rouse in ordinary man a passion fiercer than the flames: that I myself would make you queen; yet you are as safe from harm in my possession as he—the man you just now fancied more than manly—is impotent to render in the least a real consolation or a substantial aid. That you may realize fully that I am true and not false, I tender you the only instrument that ever made or unmade god or man. Do with it and with me as you like; you are both strong of arm and quick to see,” urged Hideyoshi, approaching and tendering with much reverence the hilt of his unsheathed, if vain, resolver of ethics.

Yodogima frowned. All the womanhood within her revolted at such boasted display of wanton cowardice. That man never is right till might has made him so, she could well believe; that might is right in the eyes of the gods were as incomprehensible to her as it seemed satisfying to him.

“Look me in the face,” demanded she, without lifting a foot.

Hideyoshi colored, and bowed only the lower: his eyes shifted about reluctantly, and useless.

“Shame!” threatened she, advancing a step.

“I am advised of no better means than—” began Hideyoshi, cold with suspense.

“A bluff? How often have you practiced this sort of ennui upon others, perhaps more tolerant? I would set a better example,” interposed Yodogima, snapping his weapon against the ground and casting the fragments away.

“Well done,” promised he, recovering somewhat his composure. “But haven’t you oversaid yourself, a bit? The tables turned, however, may be more becoming; I can prove my valor: a broken heart is less easily mended. I need not suggest, of course, that you yourself might name—the terms?”

“No, no,” gasped Yodogima, as the possible fate of Ieyasu flashed into mind.

“Then it is really quite unnecessary to arrange it—yet I had sooner meet a worthy man than fall begging of a pretty woman. Come; I shall take you whether you will or not, with or without the means, before or after the test, temptation or provocation. Let us be off, to Azuchi, where the muses hold their tongues and order wins fairly the heart.”

“Captivity implies compulsion—in some instances; but our lord’s behavior convinces me that I might have fallen into less—considerate hands.”

Hideyoshi led the way down along the winding incline and back into the very place which she had but a short hour thence deserted; in a more hopeful, if less certain, mood. The same walls enclosed the front and sides, the outlet at the rear had not changed at all; humanity seemed continuing its blind rush toward an ideal bolstered with ten thousand times ten thousand conjured notions: the breath of ages smelled as sweet and wholesome as it did before she had quitted there and gone to the mountain’s crest: her heart beat as warmly for her own chosen lord as ever; but something within, a silent mover of the senses and regulator of the mind, told her that were that love to ripen and shed its fruit something better than waiting and a thing more potent than might must intervene to stay the hand of probability—and together with consciousness came the sting.

Then the will arose, calling loudly upon the often fickle, but now most worthy, God of Constancy to lead her truly and deliver her aright unto the man she believed incapable of design; much more, fully competent to make the rescue.

“I do love you—I know it now—O Ieyasu—my love, my faith, my hope.”

The men and trappings rattled and tramped on the outside; preparations were making for the march, and Hideyoshi now more than ever scolded the lines and spruced his bearing. The fortunes of war had made him master of central Japan, had given him the capital and placed him in possession of the emperor, but the wiles of a woman taxed more heavily his energies.

Whether to overawe with guards and poltroonery or to encourage by liberties granted and confidences bestowed, were to him, now, under the circumstances, and in this case, quite as vital a matter as had been in ordinary times the choice between tweedledee and tweedledum.

The princess, herself, had made light of his own puerile methods; he had purposely refrained from demanding, as was the custom, the head of his old-time rival, Shibata, her father, solely in the hope of soothing and inspiring her: had he failed also in that? Ieyasu had been allowed to escape, that terror should not drive his coveted love to a last extremity; but seemingly all his plans had miscarried, placing him now at the brink of a still more vital blunder—and win he would: if unfairly, none the less manly, for that.

Her two sisters had disappeared—Takiyama had laid siege to the one, and the other scolded the way along to keep her company and see that Hideyoshi’s second best general proved a diligent escort.

The roads were smooth, withal their crookedness and the rugged aspect of the country through which they entered to pass. An occasional rabbit jumped away, into the thicket, none the wiser for a strange, harmless fright, and Yodogima marvelled the dextrousness of his small endeavor. Could she likewise defeat or escape harm? No; civilization had reduced her to less agile and more hardened methods. And for what? They had gone into a thickened cluster of stragglingly growing pines with drooping, needle-laden branches and no dry leaves or fallen limbs to rattle and crackle underneath. It was now getting dark again, and the probabilities of the occasion caused her to peer and listen with more than ordinary anxiety, yet no spook had ever roused in her so much as a possible thought.

The advance had gone on, rapidly, and were by this time far in the lead. Hideyoshi had remained well behind, bringing up the rear and keeping the whole under observation with as little inconvenience or damage as likely; as he was wont to do under all circumstances and in much less trying situations than this, the proudest homecoming in his hard, eventful career. That part of the cavalcade in which Yodogima’s chair constituted the principal charge had strung out along the roadstead in single file, and as there seemed no possible chance for escape in either direction the guards sang their way along in front or lagged behind in contemplation of the uncertainties foreshadowing a visit with their mothers or sweethearts at home.

Directly they had reached the darkest place, rounding a sharp curve, the princess leaned forward, staring vacantly into an ominous opening, covered and narrow, through the limbs and brush, at the lower side of the roadway. The same bettos that rescued her from the conflagration at Kitanoshi had been at her especial solicitation grudgingly retained for her further use upon this particular part of the renewed journey. They knew full well the reason—Yodogima slid carefully down from the chair and as cautiously entered the gloomy place on which her eyes had all but riveted.

“Yodogima?” whispered a voice, that quickly set at rest her anxiously pulsating self, as to what it was and who it were so subtlely attracting her attention.

“Yes, Ieyasu—but you must not be discovered here. Let me go, and save yourself. The escape you propose would ill afford either of us the relief sought.”

“Can you trust me, Yodogima?”

“I do.”

“Then go; and, depend upon it, I shall recover you; your good sense convinces me of an abiding sincerity.”

Ieyasu again slunk off into the wilderness, and Yodogima, his love pledged anew, softly climbed back into the chair, without so much as attracting a concerned witness. To constancy there had been added assurance, and thence the heart waxed light and the mind clear—the will had sooner halted at no bounds.

“He shall have me, and I will know no other; poor, weak, insignificant woman that I am,” resolved she, as the bettos at first slowly, then more rapidly, stretched forward to recover the small ground lost.

At Azuchi, to Yodogima’s surprise—agreeable as it was—and Hideyoshi’s chagrin, there developed at once much confusion and not a little bickering. Most of the three hundred or thereabout female court and household attendants already there took the matter of an additional three, though respectively young and knowing and pretty, with something of indifference; arrayed against curiosity, of course; but there happened to be one among them, the lord daimyo’s lawful wife and always best helpmeet, Oyea, who looked upon the introduction of three such princesses—whose character and former standing she had had, already, abundant opportunity as well as occasion to know and understand—with something more than ordinary concern if not outright suspicion.

This Oyea happened to be, as she herself well knew, the second wife of the rapidly rising Hideyoshi; the first one had been set aside early for no other reason than personal felicitation; and though Oyea had proven constantly his best adviser as well as most companionable personage she now held, perhaps not altogether without cause, some reasonable doubt about the future. Her husband had won his spurs, such as they were, with no other appreciable aid than her own good counsel, and now stood in a position to do pretty much as he pleased, political or otherwise, especially socially. His lordship was getting more restless, seeking new fields to conquer. She judged him rightly; had failed to render him an heir; and was she really, after all, to lose him, or his love?

Neither Jokoin nor Esyo caused her so much as a heart pang; the one frivolous, the other intrusive, could be of no other use to her husband than to serve some political necessity or trading convenience—in fact were forthwith adopted by him for those express purposes. But Yodogima! Here came a victim who stood in the light of a possible intruder.

“Take her away,” commanded Oyea, understanding her liege lord from the beginning and deigning to set her foot down only as she knew how and why.

“You wouldn’t have me turn the princess, Shibata’s daughter, out, would you? Come; let us be more charitable; the reason need not deter you, in the least; Oyea denies not to others traits she herself most admires.”

The princess, finally admitted, upon terms—thanks to Oyea—more pleasing to her than satisfying to the would-be traducer, had gained from their parley more than a knowledge of just what to expect and how best to demean herself; she had not only won with modesty the friendship of his wife but thenceforth knew better than any other the weakest spot in Hideyoshi’s hitherto unreadable make-up. Here at least the great daimyo had really halted in the enforcement of his will. No man had yet checked or escaped him in his onward rush toward the goal of an ardent ambition, but one woman, and that, too, his wife, had called a halt upon desire; perhaps a far more difficult thing of controlling than any mere mental trait. Oyea had temporarily interceded, though, without any other hold than mentality; why not herself, if she must, master him; having at least something more potent, with which to begin?

Nor had she long to wait for an opportunity to pit herself against him: as well, her sister Esyo. In the final allotment of stations in the household, Jokoin and Esyo had been assigned quarters and allowed service befitting a younger and an elder daughter; but Yodogima fared in some respects better: in fact, was at once provided with attendance more elaborate and attention no less sumptuous than it had been theretofore the good wife’s privilege to enjoy.

Oyea knew only too well what this meant in reality; but she had also measured the limit of her influence and sought by compromise to ease the burden of having ultimately to bear both the chagrin and the sorrow of tolerating under one and the same roof the fruits of a regularly established first-in-rank concubine.

She had made no mistake in Yodogima, however, and surmised from the first that would Hideyoshi succeed he must not only hold his own against outside influences but should find it necessary to combat not any the less at home the combined energies of two heads, both feminine and bent upon a common purpose.

Esyo reasoned differently. She was cold and negative by nature. Jokoin had gathered round herself all the available chivalry at the castle, leaving her less ardent sister to worry and resolve rather a more studied diversion. And jealousy soon developed an opportunity. She wrought accordingly.

Thus ensconced in time as satisfactorily as possible under the circumstances, Hideyoshi thought it best to let the women wrangle out among themselves the ordinarily necessary little adjustments of so vital a beginning; hence, without much ado, and little encroachment upon the liberties or patience of Yodogima, set off toward Ozaka fully determined upon providing the young princess with a place and environment all her own. This important old fortress city—wrested in former years by Nobunaga from the turbulent monks—not only occupied one of the strongest natural sites for offensive and defensive purposes but offered as well some most advantageous prospects for residential beautification and enjoyment. The property already fallen into his hands, Hideyoshi forthwith gave instructions for the building of a castle that should outstrip anything of a like kind theretofore attempted.

“I mean to do this for Yodogima, and for her alone,” said he, to Oyea, who called him to task for such intended prodigality, “in consideration of the benefits bestowed upon me by her dear father in the performance of harakiri (suicide). You need have no fears, nor she any misgivings.”

The men were set at work, and Esyo began planning; she could not bear the slight, yet knew that her only prospect lay in Ieyasu.

Dispatching forthwith a message (duly intercepted, of course) in which all of the facts were related with as much imagination as she could bring to bear upon the subject, Esyo deliberately set herself the task of undoing all that Yodogima had suffered to accomplish.

“Depend upon what I say, she has no thought or intention of keeping or remembering her obligations to your own dear self or to any one else, not even her own abused and neglected sisters,” wrote she, at length, winding up with the admonition that would he save himself harm he should act at once.

Having sooner made without any success several attempts at communicating with Yodogima, this first missive of an avowed friend—whom he believed to be turned somewhat practical and not at all sentimental—quite overcame Ieyasu, wholly upsetting the meager plans that he had evolved for the at least temporary subversion of a prospective antagonist and the immediate recovery of his truly dearer than ever sweetheart. Conscious of the pitfalls with which she must be surrounded, yet he could not believe her untrue: realizing the dangerous ground upon which he must tread, still he would not for that refrain from attempting a personal visit; Yodogima had advised him: she, if recovered at all, must be released by some subtler art than war—Hideyoshi held it in his power to crush him, and was he any less a diplomat?

Hitherto Ieyasu had held peace to be well gained at any price, but now that love possessed him, burned and coaled deep into the heart-chords, he had given up the future, sold his soul for the loan of a force with which to fight reasonably a single combat. Recalling the occasion, he would have thrust Hideyoshi through at the cost of a bushido: remembering Katsutoya’s warning, the barest conception of a laggard wit startled him into the first really energizing confession that he had ever made:

“I am unworthy of her.”

Everywhere around, men with less opportunity were rising as if metalled to accomplish anything. He, too, must do something to prove himself worth the confidence of a true love—why not trust Esyo? Designing to poison him against Yodogima, she had paved the way only to a more questionable undertaking—that of betrayal. Ieyasu answered the message kindly, inclosing therewith another to Yodogima (also intercepted), informing her of his intentions and asking that she make ready.

Upon the arrival of the letter, Yodogima said:

“I am going to confide in you, Esyo; you are a sister—next to me—and have never proven false: I just must have the confidence of someone; it is killing me, this terrible suspense. Will you listen, dear?”

Esyo nestled close to Yodogima’s side, and looking submissively into her face, begged:

“Let us trust each other, Yodogima; otherwise how can we bear the awful burden of this horrid place?”

“Ieyasu is coming; he has arranged it, and I am going away from here, to be his wife, never to part again.”

“How nice that will be—but the castle! Had you forgotten that?”

“Yes; it shall then be yours; and you, a more gracious queen.”

The bare thought of gaining such preferment only at the will of a much sought after sister, and that, too, for the sake of serving rather her convenience, stung Esyo as no words could have done. She would fight out, now, the course sooner determined upon; hence Hideyoshi, on the very next day, found it agreeable to dispatch, without any compunction upon his part, an invitation to Ieyasu forthwith to come to Azuchi, there to pay respects and claim his intended bride.

Other advice went along, however, as Jokoin well knew, which was neither intercepted nor answered, advising him to do no such thing, but to prepare himself at once for defense.