THE SURPRISING STORY OF MOMOTARO—AKUDOGI AND SPOTTED DOG

"I don't care a button," said Leslie, on the third morning of their stay in Nikko. "Danjuro may go be hanged. I'm not going to leave here till I've settled about the kid."

"Ay, ay!" said Mac. "The man who will to Cupar maun to Cupar. I would only imprees upon you this, that time is going and time is money."

"I know; but it won't take more than a few days now. They say they've hunted the whole country round there, and can't find trace of her people."

"Na, and never will. If she has onny real people they won't fash themselves aboot her; girls in Japan are as plentiful as blaeberries in Lorne—you're sadlit with her."

"Well, I want her, that's the truth. I've taken a fancy to her; she's not the sort of thing one picks every day—she and her thunder-cats and dragons."

"I won't say she is not an attractif wee boddie," said Mac, "but think of the future, mon, when she's graun up."

"Bother the future! I'm rich enough to see after her. D'y know, Mac—"

"Weel?"

"I wonder did she come out of those azaleas?"

Mac gave a grunt.

Curiously enough, his point of view had changed, and he was now convinced, or pretended to be convinced, that the treasure trove was a solid body and no bogle.

"Because," went on Leslie, "it may be fact or fancy, but when I picked her up she seemed slipping away into thin air till I kissed her, and then she became solid."

"Imphim," said Mac, using a variation of the sound that was simply stuffed with meanings all uncomplimentary to Leslie's intelligence.

"They used to tell me when I was a kid that babies came out of parsley beds. Well, I'm half inclined to believe the tale has come true at last, and she came out of those azalea bushes. Of course," said Leslie suddenly, and as if apologizing to his own common sense, "I don't really believe it, but I like to fancy it; it's so much nicer than thinking she came into the world the other way."

The prosperity of the Tea House of the Tortoise still continued, people coming from far and near to get a glimpse of the foundling.

Every day Mac and Leslie would take her out for a walk, and she clopped beside them in her little clogs delightfully grave, and seemingly unmindful of the polite following of children that always tailed after them without appearing quite to do so. Children bouncing colored balls, playing hop scotch or what not, yet always with an eye on the child that had come out of the azaleas.

Shopping with Campanula Leslie found to be a new pleasure; a present, no matter what, was received with such deep thankfulness, such quaint expressions of gratitude.

He ordered Mother Ranunculus—requested her, rather—to get a complete new outfit for his charge, everything that money could buy, from tabi to hairpins, from kimonos to clogs. As for toys, she simply wallowed in them: bouncing balls and battledores fell round her as if from the sky, not to mention a doll as big as a baby of three, which she instantly became a mother to, carting it about on her back tucked under her kimono.

The one thing that disturbed Leslie was her seeming indifference to her own strange position. Beyond the bald statement that she had a father, she never referred to that enigmatical gentleman, nor did she grieve, outwardly at least, about her separation from him.

By the end of the week the two Scotchmen and their charge began to be welded into a corporate body—a little quaint family party. It was strange the influence of this child upon these two men whom fate had drawn together from the corners of the earth. Leslie, with newly acquired interest in life, had grown five years younger in mind, and as for Mac, he had grown ten degrees more human. His withered fatherly instincts were awakened—at least they opened one eye—and it was pretty to see him with his gnarled, horny hands and intent, weather-beaten face making chickens for the Lost One out of orange pips.

They would go out, all three, and wander about Nikko and its temples, and they would sit on grassy banks in the gardens of Dai Nichi Do, just as a father and an uncle and niece might sit on seats in Kensington Gardens, and then Leslie and his partner would discuss the future and trade, whilst Campanula played with her doll or bounced a ball.

Here one day, whilst the sun shone on the little lake and the pink and copper maples, the tiny islands and bridges and pagodas, Campanula, weary of play, told, in a sing-song voice and broken manner, the story of Momotaro, otherwise called Peachboy, and his wonderful deeds. She told it standing before them, and striking attitudes suitable to the phases of the tale.

One day, it appears, an old woman found a huge peach, and she was just going to cut it in two with a knife when the peach broke open, and out tumbled a baby. This very surprising thing happened a long time ago, but exactly when Campanula could not possibly say.

Then Peachboy grew up, and every day he grew fatter and stronger, till at last he grew so big that he determined to fight Akudogi, the king of the Ogres, who lived on an island—somewhere. And he started out, said Campanula, with a sword and a bag full of millet dumplings, each with a salted plum in the center, to fight the Ogres.

Here she took from her sleeve a paper of sweets, and gravely presented it to her companions, who each took one. She took one herself, consumed it, and resumed the narrative.

On the way he met a spotted dog, a monkey, and a crow, and to each he gave a dumpling, and they followed him to the attack on Akudogi, the king of the Ogres.

The narrator's voice became deeper in tone, and she spread out her fingers as if in fear.

The crow flew first to the castle of Akudogi and held him in talk, whilst Peachboy, spotted dog, and the monkey, got over the castle wall.

Campanula was now standing before her auditors in a most dramatic attitude, her hands uplifted, the fallen back sleeves of her kimono showing her arms, and her brown eyes full of fear. She did not seem to see either Leslie or M'Gourley. Her eyes were fixed on the frightful Akudogi, and Peachboy, the spotted dog and the monkey, who were about to attack him.

The crow, when he saw that his companions had gained an entrance to the castle, flew away with a laugh, and Akudogi turned and beheld Peachboy and his brave companions. He gnashed his teeth, pulled out his sword, and oh!

Frightened to death with her own imaginations, she rushed with a little shriek into Mac's arms for protection.

"Hauld yourself taegether; I winna let them catch ye! I winna let them catch ye!" cried Mac, as he clasped the perfumed bundle that had flung itself into his arms.

"What's all that she was telling?" asked Leslie, who felt rather jealous that Mac should have been chosen as the harbor of refuge.

"Only a daft tale about ogres an' spotted dogs. She's clean crackit on all sorts of queer beasties. Only last night she told me a tale aboot a rat that played the fiddle an' a tortoise that came to listen, and she told what the tortoise speired an' what the rat made answer, till you could have sworn you heard the rat and the tortoise claverin' taegither."

"Well, hand her over here," said Leslie; "she's not yours." And he took Campanula from Mac and placed her on his knee. "She's mine. I paid ten shillings to that chap with the reed-pipe to whistle her up."

"I'll tell you what," said Mac.

"Well?"

"I'll gi' you ten shullin' for a half share, and pay half the expeenses of her upbringing."

"No, she's mine; you can play with her as much as you like, but I'm going to keep her. She's the jolliest thing I ever struck, and I'm going to stick to her. I saw that policeman Johnnie this morning, and he's quite given up hope of finding her people. They've hunted everywhere. I offered him a fiver to cover the business, but he would not touch the money. He says the chief of police at Tokyo knows you."

"Weel does he know me, seven year and more."

"And he says there's no objection to our taking her along to Nagasaki if you give your bond that she will be looked after, so I was thinking of starting to-morrow."

"Wull you take her with us?"

"I was thinking of leaving her with the 'Tortoise' people till I settle about a place to live in at Nagasaki, and then coming back to fetch her. She'll be all right with them, I suppose?"

"Ay, she'll be right enough," said Mac, and they left the gardens of Dai Nichi Do, and headed for the hostelry.

That night the Areopagus convened itself again, and M'Gourley explained matters. It was necessary that he and his honorable friend should go to Nagasaki, and they proposed that the Lost One should be left behind at the Tea House of the Tortoise, to be kept till called for, warehoused, in short, and, of course, paid for accordingly. Was Madame Ranunculus willing?

Most willing.

A sum of money would be placed in the landlord's hands as guarantee.

Oh, that was perfectly unnecessary!

Still, the Hon. Leslie wished it.

Accordingly, a sum equivalent almost to the value of the Tea House of the Tortoise, was placed in the landlord's hands, who placed it in numerous folds of rice paper, and handed it to his wife, who engulfed it in her kimono.

These matters having been satisfactorily settled, Campanula was led off to bed and dinner was served.

Next morning at eight o'clock two rikshas arrived to take the travelers to the station. The whole of the "Tortoise" folk, Hedgehog San included, came to the front of the house. The cry, "Sayonara—come again quickly," followed them as they swept round the pond and out at the gate, a cry made up of the landlord's croaking basso, the sweet voices of the MousmÈs, and Campanula's childish treble.

"She seemed sorrier to part with old Mac than me," thought Leslie as they span along. "Ugh!" He turned his head in disgust from an English tourist in tweeds, who was engaged in kodaking a temple.

In the train, with a pipe in his mouth and M'Gourley opposite to him, he felt as if he had just stepped out of a dream; a dream of sun and splendor, a dream in which figured camellia trees twenty feet high, and the form of the Lost One standing amidst the glory of crimson azaleas.

But another picture obtruded itself upon this pleasant dream.

Away in the mountains not far from Lake Chuzenji, a green thing had been discovered, a thing that had once been a man. Mac had been to view it at the request of the police, but he could not identify it as the body of the Blind One of the Nikko Road. It was green from the chlorophyll of the cryptomerias. In the quaint language of the Japanese police, it was the body of a man whom "the trees had beaten to death."