In the meantime there had developed within the ranks, and outside as well, no inconsiderable speculation as to what further to expect. Hitherto Hideyoshi had found ample employment for all his talents; from the beginning it had been one constant, absorbing grind, but now that all the barons worth the while had been subdued, the last man who could in any manner check or hinder him apparently disposed with, he more restless than ever, Hojo made an example of, and Yodogima undoubtedly his keep, they might well conjecture.

Already some ugly rumors had started, and circulated (Esyo came and went at leisure), causing Yodogima to ponder, no less made the master furious.

“Eigh? A subordinate question his superior? Crucify the culprit,” commanded he, intending quite another example.

“No,” interposed Yodogima, complacently.

“Well,” replied Hideyoshi, to the officer, after a moment’s reflection, “as the villain did not utter the speech in my presence you may instead cut off his head.”

“No,” repeated Yodogima, more positively.

“Ah,” ventured Hideyoshi, vainly cogitating some sort of excuse, “seeing he is a samurai, you had better tell him to commit harakiri.”

“No,” commanded Yodogima, now wholly conscious.

“Promote him, then, for having done me a service,” directed he, still set upon some voice in the matter.

“Not you, but me,” retorted Yodogima, now fully determined upon her part.

“Why you; I am master, am I not?”

“Not of me; and, I am going to see that you prove yourself something more than a head-chopper.”

“You have heard?”

“Yes; Esyo just now told me all about it.”

“Women will talk,” sighed Hideyoshi, mindful of a hundred battle fields, and no one woman that he had ever conquered.

“And I’ll show you that they can do more,” threatened she, without a change to suggest an advantage.

Yodogima had taken desperate chances in calling Hideyoshi to account as done, but she had studied him well and believed herself capable—not that she might have need to combat any mean advantage; but gossip, vain assumption, had compelled now the assertion and maintenance of a womanhood; which otherwise had not been questioned.

Hitherto Hideyoshi had been held as interested only in the affairs of men, wholly absorbed with the making and unmaking of fortune or fortunes so distant and neglectful of any influence that women might bring to bear that none had essayed to do more than serve and chatter for centuries; but now, that he had so overstepped the bounds of conventional warfare as to indulge effeminate pastimes and cringe in the presence of a princess, he himself might be excused and she most surely condemned.

Ieyasu, even, who knew in his own heart, looked upon Yodogima’s heroic stand as more the result of sustained loyalty than innate purity.

“And that loyalty will preserve her, as self-denial is to be the making of me,” muttered he, to himself, as the preparations for his submissive removal progressed: that, from a rich and populous estate, where men had learned to love and respect him from childhood, would sacrifice their lives and their energies to defend him, to a new, and a strange, and an isolated keep, where disorder, dissatisfaction, and crude and crumbling walls abounded: that, too, with only a bodyguard, his Saji, and the vain, if not unscrupulous, Esyo to accompany him.

And as the little straggling band marched away, harboring its jealousies, it may be revenge, certainly its ambitions, Yodogima turned from them in compassion—her heart seemed breaking, but duty rallied to the call of pride, and she forgave him, perchance tried to forget.

Esyo could not be so easily dismissed; her parting words had lingered, now roused in Yodogima to the full some comprehension of what her father meant in turning her out threateningly in the company of two seemingly lovable and harmless sisters. His guidance and protection had been a world to her now, that she had, as she alone believed, reaped the fullest measure of bitterness, wherein God has endowed that man shall covet. Charms had been easily flung at them, Esyo’s hinted admonition seized upon with avidity, and the body sacrificed upon the altar of rapacity, but the spirit rebelled and held her fast in its higher reach.

“Perhaps, Yodogima, the bushido might afford you, as it did our father, some really honorable means.”

Those words welled up and rimmed over in Yodogima’s heart, as molten lava heaves and lips and inflows at the crater’s edge. Esyo, a sister, had denounced her, but something within, a promise somewhere, sustained her, roused her to a deeper, broader sense of duty than she could conjure forth of self-effacement. Then Jokoin came, and only her presence had made it seem once more as if earth truly held some fair portion, but her counsel, too, seemed empty, even blasphemous.

“Christ is our redeemer; He died to save us; I am confessed; hallelujah!” shouted Jokoin, happy and careless, if unmindful.

“Sister! You shock me. Have you forgotten our father?”

“Oh, he’s alright; he didn’t know; the new religion takes ‘em all. Repent and be saved; quarrel and separate; divorce and—do you know, they allow man, big men, only one wife at a time; firstary, secondary, or multipary? That’s something!”

“I do believe you are losing your mind, Jokoin.”

“That’s nothing; go to Bungo; they’re half daffy there; and, they say, Hideyoshi, himself, would have accepted Christianity were it not for giving up the idea of more wives than one. I guess, though, he’s a stickler on that—perhaps, come to think, you may know better than I?”

“I know my own mind; and that is more than it would seem—there, Jokoin; it is enough; let us be sisters—I presume there is nothing against that, in your religion?”

“Really, I haven’t inquired: the priests will know—however, we might just sort of hang out that way; it’s an elastic affair, this Christian religion, whatever else.”

Withal her newfangled notions and queer mannerisms, Yodogima found this little sister most stimulating and satisfying to know and to cling to, however trying or unreasonable. Each, it is true, had an ideal of her own, quite as distinct and appealing to its possessor, as Esyo’s had been to her, yet neither one had stooped to attain, nor would she. Jokoin had become a Christian because it pleased her to do so: its revelation had resolved more the humorous than serious, the human and not the divine. A half century of struggle and martyrdom had proven, if anything, in their minds, that the Christian church, like all others, were but a means to an end: that God alone is supreme—substitution or addition or usurpation a dangerous, designed, fleeting makeshift.

All these creeds had been threshed out in competition and with vengeance—none had spared life or property—and yet it seemed to Yodogima that she must be saved: saved in accordance with precepts established and of a danger that to her were more than death or salvation, or both, however atoned or attuned. She must live, she must do, and in that attain: in her prayer she asked for power and not for ransom.

The whole camp now enlivened with bustle and drive; each of the captains had been assigned his portion or placed most advantageously, in their distributions and allotments, and great preparations were making for the leave-taking—some heart-rending, others in good cheer. Most of Hideyoshi’s leaders shared Ieyasu’s former possessions, but Gamo Ujisato, one of Jokoin’s recently ardent admirers—Takiyama had been sooner banished to Kaga—without leave or let, on her part, was set down at Aizu, in the cold far north.

“Never mind, Jokoin,” promised Hideyoshi, upon her remonstrance; “you shall have left Ishida, and, perchance, another, or some others, I fear too much a mask for hypocrisy: with them, you should be able to make out, if not capture the empire.”

“What a bunch!” replied Jokoin, sorely abashed.

“Well, then, suppose you include your humble—ahem!”

“An old dried-up man like you? I had rather try—”

“Kyogoku?”

“Yes; smart Alex; he has left a bit of ginger, if not as much audacity as—some others.”

“Oho, aha; I can, perhaps, also, place him.”

“Not on your life.”

“I wonder.”

“I don’t; I’ve a sister.”

“So, so; and two of them. It’s a pretty nest or nests, or something they build—I’m building. Hideyoshi! Whipped every man in Japan, that’s worth the trouble, and three will-o’-the-wisps would set up housekeeping on results. Esyo denies me, Jokoin defies me, and Yodogima—you can go, young lady; you and I couldn’t quarrel, should we try; but, remember, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush—I wonder, is Yodogima in a better mood?”

“Don’t do so much wondering. Just try your luck. You ought to know how.”

“I do; I do; I’ll vow, you’ve made a new man of me.”

“And you’ve made me happy. What’s the use—the priests: the exiles—”

“There, now; run along; love and law—edicts must be obeyed. Hang the villains; the bonzes were a blessing; treachery is damnation!”

Jokoin left him, standing in a rage; she knew very well that he was then on the way to plead his own cause in very different terms, if not with less success than she had met in a manner so unexpected and unthought. Two things, however, were accomplished in that short, saucy, and withal agreeable conversation; the kwambaku had been fairly warned as to Yodogima’s real temper, and he himself wrought into the proper humor for his contemplated meeting: the fun of taunting, had recompensed Jokoin.

“I’ll have this thing settled, once and for all,” muttered Hideyoshi, as Jokoin disappeared behind a moving cavalcade and he had turned to climb the hill where Yodogima marvelled and fretted the tardiness of his appearance.

An old yashiki (mansion) afforded the princess temporary quarters farther up on the hillside and away from the hurry-skurry of the camp below. It was warm and restful, with a breeze blowing gently inland from the ruffled bay in front and the seething ocean beyond. Yodogima sat at the veranda’s edge, high upon the stone-abutting wall that terraced here and there the hill’s sharp incline or served as foundation to some house perched high in air. The skies were clear, and now and then a raven hawked his weird cry aloft the stilled hamlets in front or clusters of seagull reeled and fed in the distance.

No clouds of smoke darkened the outlook or blackened these mats. Clanging bells and grinding wheels there were none to awaken anxiety and shatter nerves. The very exigencies of life found expression through its subtler entities and not a sordid instinct lagged or threatened fain regeneration. Man loved as always, but gold for the sake of gold, greed that he might gorge, or the dull clashing of horns had long ago found their rest alongside of other tried-out and found wanting thrills in easy energies. The star beautiful had raised him to newer, grander speculation than the things of earth conjured or the hope of forgiveness promised. For every reach attained there must be some effort put forward: for each sin committed an atonement. Self pretending, by others accepted, saviors and martyrs there had been many, but as time went on one after another of these conjectured blessings or blind experiments had been swept aside or lost in the wake of a constantly progressive manhood, at times cast high upon the billow’s crest, again sunken low into the troughs of despair, yet always guided by a light that shone singly ahead, against whose halo no discordant voice had as believed dimmed or dulled the truer harmonies of an eternal, perfectly consistent God.

Yodogima looked aloft and all around. Peace on earth and good-will toward men whispered from every nook and cranny. The birds sang it, the flowers smelled it, the world looked consistent, but the heart discerned a discordant note. Were death heaven’s only beginning, life’s sole end? No, no; it must not be, for I see with closed eyes, hear with muffled ears, feel without the sense of touch a Kami, whose works neither begin with worlds nor end in man; an illumination extending from heaven unto earth. There is no subtler hold than that we know; the things we see are but the shades of reality. Truth vainly lives apart and is infinite.

Sitting there enveloped, within a world as distinct as sublime, as far above earth as its canopy is broad, the mystic spell touched and warmed her as though its complement were at hand. The province of sex fastened upon her as the sun’s rays congeal and expand with each unhindered contact: communing, Yodogima had been less than human, had worse than mocked His divinest precept, were the bread and wine passed untasted.

Hideyoshi stood over, the world exacted its decrees, and conformity offered her an only excuse:

“I hear you,” replied she, “am conscious of my obligations, and would not defy that is. Take me as I am. I’ll serve you if Kami commands; let the law have its way, and make me what you like: in the name of all that has gone before and that is to be, let me and do you save, too, the honor of woman.”

That night the two-lipped cup once more went round—its never-ending course—and Yodogima became in law as she was in fact first of consequence at Hideyoshi’s court.

And if these things were inevitable, if there remained at Azuchi a soul forlorn and perchance bitter, perhaps welling up a still more ruthless indisposition, and if the ideal toward which a hapless, helpless woman had bent her every energy, sacrificed the body to preserve a soul, were attained—if all this had resulted in fact, there yet remained among them one in whose heart there lingered not only a burning, compelling sense of duty, but as well an abiding faith in truth.

Yodogima had not surrendered the spirit, nor had she submitted in pride, or bowed to falsehood, hate, or weakness—to her the world seemed as sweet and as wholesome as the battle had been swift or exacting.

Thence life portended a fullness that hitherto had been a dream.