HE young Prince of Mori, no longer the Shining Prince Keiki, lay huddled in a corner of his dungeon. Vainly he had thrown his weight against the stone doors, only to rebound, baffled and bruised. Vainly he had called in piercing accents for help. There came no response from man or gods. Only his frantic voice, fleeing like the wind through the passage-ways of the empty prison, dark, damp, and for long unused, seemed to call back to him in the mocking tones of a demoniac.

A prisoner! A prisoner! He, the heir of Mori, the hope, the idol of the brave Imperialists, the son of the most powerful prince in all Japan, barring not even the Shogun himself! A prisoner! Penned like a common criminal within the stone walls of a loathsome dungeon! It could not be true. It was a hideous nightmare, caused by that terrible, ceaseless, excruciating pain in his head, and the mad turmoil in his brain.

He had been captured on the outskirts of his father’s province. He was alone, with not one vassal or retainer in attendance upon him. He had made the wildest resistance. More than one samurai paid with his life for the capture of the Shining Prince. Overpowered by such numbers that it seemed madness not to yield, Keiki could not be taken while a spark of life remained in him with which to resist. Only when he was beaten quite senseless were the Shogun’s officers and the Catzu samurai able to capture the Prince. Even then many of the samurai refused the inglorious task of carrying away the young Prince, who had fought against them with such desperate bravery. To drag his unconscious, bleeding, helpless body before his judges would be beneath the dignity of a samurai. So the office was assigned to some of the Shogun’s spies.

When Keiki had returned to consciousness he was as one in a dull dream, a nightmare, wherein painful events wove a net about him from which he could not stir or move to save himself.

The trial had been a brief one. A few questions, a multitude of proofs, irrefutable evidence, the testimony of some false samurai now become a ronin, a private statement by the samurai Shimadzu—that was all. No word or question whatever was addressed to the prisoner, nor was he given the opportunity to speak in his own defence, had he been in a condition to do so. He stood between two guards, one on either side, while four others stood before him and a score at his back.

Keiki was quite beyond understanding the proceedings, and only the Spartan will of the samurai lent to him that almost unnatural strength by which he stood stoutly upon his feet while his head swam. Out of a multitude of surging words and sentences only one word reached his ears and penetrated to his consciousness—

“Treason!”

And the word called up a haunting memory of a dark and stagnant moat wherein the sacred lotus blossoms, symbolic of the purity of woman, hid the treacherous waters beneath, of a sloping bank where the grasses grew high over his head, and the willows at the bottom waved in a foot of water. A young girl’s face shone out of this strangely mixed background. It was very long ago, it seemed to Keiki, and though her face was quite dim to his vision now, he remembered that it was like unto the lotus, perfectly pure and peerlessly beautiful, only behind her beauty, unlike that of the lotus, there were no treacherous deeps of darkling waters. Keiki remembered vaguely now that she had crawled through the willows, through the moat, perhaps, to come to him to warn him of this treason. Treason? Whose?

Thus Keiki’s tangled mind followed not the mockery of the trial, nor heeded the sonorous voice of the crier, who echoed the words of the Lord Judge, and shouted mechanically:

“Guilty! Death!”

A small company of armed men led him from the judgment-hall. They made a long journey, marching by night. Passive, stupidly indifferent to everything, Keiki was led to prison.

Only when they had locked him within the empty stone cell, did the old, passionate rebellion that had swayed him so savagely when he had resisted capture break out with renewed fury, driving in a flash his apathetic dulness from him.

His captors had taken his two swords from him, the two proud swords from which a samurai must never part. The Prince was to become lord over the samurai, yet he had been trained in the same school, and with as severe a discipline as that of the simple soldier. Had they left him these, his samurai swords, in all probability the Prince would have ended his misery. As it was, he spent the night in fruitless, impotent raving. Morning found him exhausted. Even the samurai’s great power of will over the physical body could avail him no longer.

When the samurai Shimadzu unlocked the door of the cell no desperate, wild-eyed prince leaped at his throat. The young Prince of Mori lay stretched across the floor of the dungeon. The glittering cords of his coat, the golden hip-cape, with its billowings and embroiderings of dragons and falcons, all the late luxurious finery which had earned for him the sobriquet of “The Shining Prince,” and which were also the insignia of his high rank, were now torn and stained with the cruellest of colors. The dark hair fell back, clotted with the perspiration on his noble brow, from which the blue veins started through the fine skin. The long lashes covered the eyes and swept the almost boyish curves of the death-white cheeks. His lips were parted, and he was still raving, but in the babbling, weak, piteous fashion of one delirious from loss of blood.

After feeling the Prince’s hands and head, Shimadzu was satisfied with his condition. Roughly binding up a bad wound upon the shoulder, he called for a stretcher. Borne upon this temporary couch, straightway the Prince was carried to the home of the executioner.

Meanwhile Wistaria had made ready for the reception of their expected guest. Having taken off her silken omeshi and removed the jewelled ornaments from her hair, she appeared in a rough cotton kimono, of a bright red-and-yellow pattern, such a garment as a laboring woman or one of the heimin would have worn. But she had taken especial pains with her hair and face. The shining, dark locks, which formed such a charming frame for her beautiful face, were spread wide and folded back, so that their beauty might be exaggerated. Because she was pale, as one about to die rather than to wed, she had rubbed upon her cheeks, chin, and brow brazen red paint, something previously she would have scorned to touch. Instead of brightening the pallor of her face, however, it only heightened its haggardness.

Wistaria sat in the centre of the chill, empty guest-room. She was smiling. She had been smiling ever since she had descended from her chamber. Her eyes were glassy, and shared not in that forced, blighting smile which she wore upon her lips. Very still, like an automatic puppet with the works unwound within it, she sat.

The Lady Evening Glory, on the other hand, flitted back and forth like a restless spirit. Sometimes she paused by the little, waiting figure, stroking the shining head. But in her heart the proud Lady of Catzu had little sympathy for the one who was to be sacrificed to the vengeance of a samurai. When she recalled that her niece was renouncing her lover to whom she had pledged herself to all eternity, she thought, with the selfish egotism of one who has outgrown her own heart, that in marrying a prince, even though she won him by trickery, certainly her niece would be faring better than if she had bestowed herself on one of his vassals.

Then, too, Wistaria, after all, was merely a female—an Eta maiden. So the lady’s selfish mind fed itself upon one thought, mingled hope and suspense for the fate of her son.

When the sound of tramping feet were heard without, the Lady Wistaria did not stir, but the cold and stately Lady of Catzu went rushing across the room to fling herself against the window. The tramp of feet grew louder, deeper, heavier. They smote upon Wistaria’s ears like the beat of Shinto drums at a funeral. Still she did not stir, not even when the doors of the house were pushed wide apart and the tramping feet entered, passed through the outer room, and then into the guest-room. The set smile upon her face deepened. Wistaria laid her head to the mats, prostrated herself in exquisite, humble greeting.

Thus, for some time, she courtesied low.

Some one pulled her sleeve. She sat up and stared at the figure on the stretcher. They had set it down beside her on the floor. Somewhere in another part of the house she heard dim voices, above them all her father’s deep, hollow voice, sounding strange—clear.

A sort of awe and horrible reverence fell upon her as she clutched her aunt’s hand. Then the two half crept, half crawled, close to the stretcher. Wistaria looked at the face, looked, and looked, and looked again. A heart-rending shriek burst from her lips. She fell across her lover’s body, spreading the wings of her sleeve over and about him, as though to shield and protect him from all harm.