THE LOST ONE

A congreve rocket incautiously touched by a match could not have given a more surprising result.

Flinging the pipe from him with a yell, the Blind One sprang clear over the circle, and stood for an instant panting and blowing at the sun.

He seemed blowing away things that were trying to enter his mouth; then, the staff attached by a thong to his wrist flying about wildly, he began to tear at himself all over his body and fling things away from him, as though he were attacked by a hundred thousand scorpions; then as if bitten by some more serious enemy, he seized his staff, and striking about him wildly, began to run. Hither and thither, hitting right and left, dashing against trees and seeming utterly regardless of them, bleeding, torn, and all the time fighting his phantom pursuers he ran till he vanished round the bend leading towards Nikko. The two Scotchmen ran to the bend of the road, and there down the road they saw him still running, and fighting as if for his life; striking above him as if at things in the air, and around him as if at things leaping at him from the ground. Suddenly he vanished round a further bend, and was lost to view.

"He's gone gyte!" said Mac as they returned.

"Well, I'm damned!" said Leslie.

"I touched his heel, and I suppose he thought it was one of the devils—mad fool!"

"'Tis no madness," said Mac. "If ever I saw a man chased by deevils I've seen one now. 'Twas that mark you made let them loose, or my name's not Tod M'Gourley. Did you no ken you were makin' the sign of the cross in yon damned circle of his? Hech, man! Look there!"

"Where?"

"My God!" said M'Gourley, "look you there, there! There's a bairn amongst the azaleas!"

"So there is!" said Leslie. "By Jove, a little Jap girl come out of the wood."

"Dom it, man," roared M'Gourley, "she wasn't there twarree seconds ago. She's come out of no wood; she's been fetched."

"Well, of all the superstitious idiots!" said Leslie, gazing from the perspiring M'Gourley to the figure of the quaint and pretty little Japanese girl who was busy amidst the azaleas plucking the blossoms. "Why, it wouldn't take her more than 'twarree seconds' to come out of the wood. Anyhow, I'll go and see if she's real."

"Man! man! hauld back!" cried the agonized M'Gourley as his partner plunged amidst the bushes. "Ye'll be had; she's a bogle. Lord's sake! Lord's sake! Well, gang your own gate, I'm off to Nikko."

Yet he waited.

The bogle was plucking blossoms as hard as she could and in the profuse manner of childhood. She and the azaleas made a sight for sore eyes.

She might have been seven or eight, dressed in a blue kimono with a scarlet obi, hair black as ebony shavings, tightly drawn off the forehead and held up with a tortoiseshell comb—the "germ of a woman."

Her back was turned to Leslie, and as he got within arm's length of the quaint and delicious little figure he did just what you or I might have done—bent down, seized her up, and kissed her.

The bogle dropped her flowers and gave a shriek, a most distinctly human shriek.

"He's kessed her!" cried M'Gourley, addressing the azaleas, the cypress trees, and all Japan.

Then he stood in agony, held to the spot by the sight of Leslie and the bogle making friends.

It didn't seem to take long, for presently he returned through the azaleas triumphant, carrying her in his arms.

"Here's your bogle," said he, placing her on the dusty road where, with all the gravity of the Japanese child, she made a deep obeisance to M'Gourley. That gentleman returned the compliment with a short, sharp nod.

"I'm awa' to Nikko," said he in the hard, irritable voice of a person who is desirous of avoiding an undesirable acquaintance, gazing at Leslie and steadily ignoring the lady in blue who was now holding on to Leslie's right leg, contemplating M'Gourley, and sucking the tip of a taper and tiny forefinger all at the same time. "I'm awa' to Nikko. 'Tis no place for a mon like me. Never was I used to the company of fules—"

"Don't be an ass! Speak to her; you have the tongue, and I haven't."

"I winna."

"Well, of all the old women I ever met," said Leslie, addressing a "thundering great camellia tree" that stood opposite, "this partner of mine takes the bun!—don't he, Popsums?" bending down and looking into the small face, the left cheek of which was now resting against his knee.

Popsums, in reply to the smile and interrogative tone in the question she did not understand, smiled gravely back and murmured something that sounded like "Hei."

M'Gourley snorted, and Leslie broke out laughing; he had little of the Japanese, but he knew that "Hei" meant "Yes."