It became common knowledge in Fukui that the fox-woman had taken up her residence on the Matsuhaira estate. The palace grounds covered nearly twenty acres, and were surrounded like a veritable wall on all sides of the estate by smaller buildings, which had once housed the retainers of the Daimio, but which had not been occupied for years and were in a dishevelled and forlorn condition of ruin and decay. Two of these dwellings had been put in order, and these were occupied by the samourai guard, the aged gateman who guarded the road leading to the mansion and the family of the Tojin-san’s interpreter, who, himself, however, had an apartment in the Shiro.

It was, therefore, quite possible for the fox-woman to find lodging in almost any of the remaining structures, and she could, if she desired, move from one to the other, and when unduly pressed, return to her old refuge of the woods and foot-hills of the mountains that bounded them on two sides of the estate.

More than one of the household had thought they had seen and recognized her. On a still, hazy night, when the golden moon barely showed an inquiring face in promise of the summer nights to come, Genji Negato had shown her to the samourai guard. Just a white, fleeting face glimmering out like that of some hunted thing between the slender, towering trunks of a grove of bamboo. A moment only under the streak of moonbeam, and then it had vanished like a mist at twilight.

Was it a dream, they asked themselves, or indeed a manifestation of the just anger of the Buddha for sins committed in a former state. Were they henceforth to be harassed, goblin-haunted?

And in the dawn, before the sun had barely shown its first glimmer of light across the eastern sky—in the misty, dewy, clammy dawn—the maid Obun had again come face to face with her. Obun was bent upon her usual task of the morning, the bringing of water from the pond to the house. Her eyes were swollen with sleep, she yawned cavernously, and as she stooped to dip the first of the pails into the water, something stirred the other side the pond, and she looked across to gaze, with fascinated eyes, at the fox-woman, whose long, sunlit hair dripped in and out among the lotus and the water-lilies, as if she bathed it in their perfumed purity. Through this dripping veil of hair her face gleamed whitely. Her lips fell apart as though she listened, her eyes were startled, wild, and looked not at but through and beyond the dumbstruck serving-maid as though she saw her not at all. Slowly, stealthily, the fox-woman came to her feet, still with that weird, seeking, listening look upon her face, and thus with backward, shivering glances, she retreated to the bamboo grove.

To his own amused dismay, the Tojin-san found himself constantly on the watch for her. He had never seen the witch, but he had heard and felt her. She crept upon him in the evenings when he strolled about his garden, and she seemed to follow his footsteps with the stealthiness of a wildcat, disappearing as fleetly as the wind at his mere turning.

He was aware of her constant nearness if he merely stepped out of his house. Once when something brushed his cheek he was startled to find himself believing at once that it was she who had touched him. He plunged into the brush at his side, and, in the dark, thrust back the branches of the low-growing trees and bushes only to find himself up to his knees in water where he had stepped unawares into an overgrown rookery and fish-pond. As he floundered helplessly about he heard her softly laughing in a weird, mocking voice, which nevertheless seemed to overrun with tears.

Holding his breath unconsciously he found himself straining his ears to listen to the sound, which indeed was so faint a whisper of a laugh he could have believed he dreamed it.

Sometimes as he drove abroad through the country she called to him from behind sheltering hillocks, and sometimes it seemed her voice floated down to him from some height—some giant tree-top, heavy laden with foliage; for it was the time of “Little Plenty” (May) and all the land was green and warm.

He found himself listening for her call—stopping, waiting for it, and returning with a sense of bitter disappointment when he heard it not. The servants gossiped, the samourai whispered among themselves. They said the fox-woman had put a spell upon him. Genji Negato repeated this to him, and was rewarded by a look of startled contempt and anger.

“Spell!” The man of science repelled the very thought; but he began to avoid the mountain-sides of his estate, and turned in preference to the river-road, whither she could not follow unless she revealed herself.

Late that month, with no advance warning of its coming, whatever, a typhoon swept venomously across the province, leaving in its wake a shattering storm that shook and beat upon the aged Shiro for a day and night; and, in the night, one encountered the shadow of the fox-woman in the great deserted halls of the Matsuhaira mansion.

A wildly shrieking housemaid, calling “Hotogoroshi!” (murder) at the top of her voice, gave the alarm, and from all parts of the palace the menials scuttled like frightened rats, taking refuge in the great kitchen in the rear.

Even Genji Negato, with blanched face and shaking knees, followed the last agitated obi into this dubious shelter. Here fortifying himself with heavier, if not trustier, implements than his swords he recovered his wits sufficiently to attempt to rally the panic-stricken army of servitors. Each in turn was ordered, urged, besought to go to the Tojin-san’s apartment. It was dastardly, so he averred, to leave the foreigner alone to face the unknown peril menacing him. For plain it was to be seen that she who had hitherto confined her malign activities to the large outdoors, had stepped at last across the threshold of the doomed palace. Undoubtedly, the typhoon which had crushed half the city so cruelly had been summoned by the witch in token of her power over them. Something horrible, sinister, was about to happen. Who could tell exactly what; but the signs were evil, evil!

He forgot the difference in his state and rank to these creatures of the kitchen, and found himself confiding to them his worst fears.

The Tojin-san slept from north to south, the position proper for a corpse alone! Genji Negato had pleaded with him to change, but the foreigner had laughed and insisted it was the true, scientific position, from pole to pole, in harmony with the electric currents of the atmosphere.

The night before all four of the samourai guard had heard the plaintive howling of a dog; an owl was seen black athwart the moon; a tail-less cat fled under the Uki (goblin-tree). The samourai had dutifully reported all these happenings to the Tojin-san, and now, when the blow seemed about to fall upon him, this stalwart guard, provided by their prince, were sleeping comfortably in their yashiki on the very edge of the estate. It was the workings of the gods!

Goto, the cook, found his fluttering tongue.

“This very morning,” said he, “I trod thrice upon an egg-shell.”

“I miserably entangled my obi when dressing,” said another.

“And I, alas! bit my tongue when eating. My mistress said it was a sign some one begrudged me my food. Who indeed but this spiteful fiend of the mountains?”

“Twice this week,” wailed the cook’s wife, “little Taro broke his chopsticks when eating.”

She fell to sobbing violently into her sleeve.

“Condescend to hush!” said Genji Negato. “Remaining silent is good.” The interpreter’s yellow face had turned ashen, his hair appeared to stand almost on end, as he listened with suspended breathing.

Outside the wild rain beat against the wind-swept trees, and dashed peltingly against the ancient Shiro. Jagged flashes of lightning zigzagged across the skies showing clearly through the walls, though the amado were in place. It was not, however, to the sound of the tempest that the interpreter was giving ear. Somewhere within the Shiro itself new sounds were heard. It was as if a wind passed along the great halls and corridors and close upon its soft-footed flight there dashed something heavy, pursuing.

Suddenly the main sliding screen or door, which led into the halls, fell inward with a crash. Over it something bounded like a ball of fiery light, passed through the kitchen swift as a lightning flash and shot out into the storm, letting in a gust of rain and wind and thunder through the shaking doors.

A moment later only, and panting like an animal in the chase, the great Tojin burst into the chamber. He stopped short, staring as if confounded at the group shuddering against the farthermost wall. Slowly his gray face relaxed its tension. He tried to speak normally, but in spite of himself his voice shook, though his words were terse, commanding.

“There is nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “Translate that, if you please, to the servants,” he sternly ordered his interpreter.

The latter’s teeth were chattering. He could barely speak.

“Your excellency—you yourself have seen—”

“I saw nothing,” said the Tojin-san, doggedly, “save the figure of a—woman!”

“A woman!” cried the interpreter, almost in tears at the evident stubbornness of this fool-white-man. “Ah, most high-up sir, would you have condescended pursuit of a mere female creature?”

The Tojin-san looked care-worn, haggard, as if he struggled within himself. His deep, stern voice quivered in spite of himself.

“She was pressed against my wall, and fled fleetly as a wild thing when I threw the doors open. The halls were unlighted. I could barely see her. My eyes were dazzled at the sudden darkness. I may have been mistaken. And yet—and yet—it seemed to me—her hair was—gold!”