Haru unlatched a gate across which twisted a plum-branch with tarnished, silver bark. It hid a garden so tiny that it was scarcely more than a rounded boulder set in moss, with a clump of golden icho shrubs. Across the path, high in air, were stretched giant webs in whose centers hung black spiders as big as Japanese sparrows. Beyond was a low doorway, shaded by a gnarled kiri tree. The thin, white rice-paper pasted behind the bars of its sliding grill shone goldenly with the candle-light within. She rang a bell which hung from a cord.

"Hai-ai-ai-ai-ee!" sounded a long-drawn voice from within, and in a moment a little maid slid back the shoji and bobbed over to the threshold.

Her mistress stepped from her gÉta into the small anteroom. Here the floor was covered with soft tatamÉ,—the thick, springy rice-straw mats which, in Japan, play the part of carpets—and a bronze vase on a low lacquer stool held a branch of dark ground-pine and a single white lily. A voice was audible, reciting in a droning monotone. It stopped suddenly and called Haru's name.

She answered instantly, and parting the panels, passed into the next room, where her father sat on his mat reading in the faint soft light of an andon. He was an old man, with white head strongly poised on gaunt shoulders. Broken in fortune and in health, the spirit of the samurai burned inextinguishably in the fire of his sunken eyes. He took her hand and drew her down beside him. She knew what was in his mind.

"Be no longer troubled," she said. "The American Ojo-San is as lovely as Ama-terasu, the Sun Goddess, and as kind as she is beautiful. I shall be happy to be each day with her."

"That is good," he said. "Yet I take no joy from it. You are the last of a family that for a thousand seasons has served none save its Emperor and its daimyo."

"I am no servant," she answered quickly. "Rather am I, in sort, a companion to the Ojo-San, to offer her my tasteless conversation and somewhat to go about with her in this unfamiliar city. It is an honorable way of acquiring gain, and thus I may unworthily pay my support, for which now from time to time you are brought to sell the priceless classics in which your soul exaltedly delights."

His face softened. "I have lived too long," he said. "My hand is palsied—I, a two-sword man of the old clan! I should have died in the war, fighting for Nippon and my Emperor. But even then was I too dishonorably old! Why did not the gods grant me a son?—me, who wearied them with my sacrifices?"

She did not answer for a moment. Nothing in her cried out at this reiterated complaint, for she was of the same blood. If she had been a son, that wound in her father's heart had been healed. Through her arm the family would have fought. Her glorious death-name might even now be written on an ihai on the Buddha-shelf, her glad soul swelling the numbers of that ghostly legion whose spiritual force was the true vitality of her nation.

"Perhaps that, too, might be," she said presently in a low voice. "Should I augustly marry one not of too exalted a station, he could receive adoption into our family."

He looked into her deeply flushing face. "You think of the Lieutenant Ishida HÉtaro," he said. "It is true that the go-between has already deigned to sit on my hard mats. He is, I think, in every way worthy of our house. I would rather he were in the field, with a sword in his hand—I know not much of this 'Secret Service.' What are his present duties? Doubtless"—with a spark of mischief in his hollow, old eyes—"you are better informed than I."

"He is in the household of one named Bersonin, a man-mountain like our wrestlers, whose service Japan pays with a wage."

His seamed face clouded. "To cunningly watch the foreigner's incomings and his outgoings, and make august report to the Board of Extraordinary Information," he said, with a trace of bitterness. "To play the clod when one is all eyes and ears. Honorable it is, no doubt, yet to my old palate it savors too much of the actor strutting on the circular stage. But times change, and if, to live, we must ape the foreigners, why, we must borrow their ways till such time—the gods grant it be soon!—when we can throw them on the dust heap. And what am I to set my debased ignorance against my Princes and my Emperor!" He paused a moment and sighed. "Ishida is well esteemed," he continued presently. "He has dwelt in America and learned its tongue—a necessity, it seems, in these topsy-turvy times. Yet, as for marriage, waiting still must be. These are evil days for us, my child. From whence would come the gifts which must be sent before the bride, to the husband's house? Your mother"—he paused and bowed deeply toward the golden butsu-dan in its alcove—"may she rest on the lotos-terrace of Amida!—came to my poor house with a train of coolies bearing lacquer chests: silken f'ton, kimono as soft and filmy as mist, gowns of cloth and of cotton, cushions of gold and silver patternings, jeweled girdles, velvet sandals and all lovely garniture. Shall her daughter be sent to a husband with a chest of rags? No, no!"

She leaned her dark head against his blue-clad shoulder and drew the scroll from his trembling fingers.

"I wind your words about my heart," she said. "Waiting is best. Perhaps the evil times will withdraw. I have prayed to the Christian God concerning it. But your eyes are augustly wearied. Let me read to you a while."

He settled himself back on the mat, his gaunt hands buried in his sleeves, and, snuffing the wick in the andon, she began to read the archaic "grass-writing." It was the Shundai Zatsuwa of Kyuso Moro.

"Be not samurai through the wearing of two swords, but day and night have a care to bring no reproach on the name. When you cross your threshold and pass out through the gate, go as one who shall never return again. Thus shall you be ready for every adventure. The Buddhist is for ever to remember the five commandments and the samurai the laws of chivalry.

"All born as samurai, men and women, are taught from childhood that fidelity must never be forgotten. And woman is ever taught that this, with submission, is her chief duty. If in unexpected strait her weak heart forsakes fidelity, all her other virtues will not atone.

"Samurai, men and women, the young and the old, regulate their conduct according to the precepts of Bushido, and a samurai, without hesitation, sacrifices life and family for lord and country."