time comes to decide that,” he concluded. “If the boy is old enough to leave home, he is of an age, also, to choose what he shall do. Let us not attempt to curb him.”

VIII

The new missionary assumed that Hyacinth was the sister of Komazawa. His interest in her was less than in Komazawa, since the boy was his father’s heir. Possibly, too, this might have been because of the natural antagonism with which the little girl had from the first met his overtures to her. From the moment when she became acutely aware that the new minister was practically responsible for the departure of her beloved Koma, the child conceived a violent dislike for him.

When the old minister, worn with his years of labor, quietly resigned his pastorate into the hands of his successor, and the new minister had taken up the management of the little church, Hyacinth refused henceforth even to enter the mission-house. All the entreaties and threats of Aoi were in vain, and, with Koma gone, she soon realized the fruitlessness of attempting to force her to do anything against her will. Comprehending the turbulent nature of the child, she knew that Hyacinth would only disgrace them both if she were forced into the church. So the departure of Komazawa meant at least the Sunday freedom of Hyacinth.

Nor was this the only result. The child, whose strange, independent nature had never been controlled by any one save by Koma, now that he was gone broke all restraints. She wandered at will about the bay, hiding in hollows in the rocks among the tombs when they sought to find her. Her little vagabond existence was not unlike that which Koma himself had led in his early childhood, save that she was not so easily restrained by the reproaches of Aoi. Like him, at this time, she scorned the companionship of other children. Like him she wandered away from her home in fits and starts, passive for an interval, and then bursting all bounds and disappearing sometimes for the space of an entire day or night, to return ragged and ravenously hungry.

But when the winter came, and the snow and icicles crested the trees and whitened the hills, poor Hyacinth was like a little, languishing, caged bird. Her face grew wistful and mournful. She would remain for hours with her face pressed against the street shoji, staring out into the white, cold world that bounded the horizon on all sides. If you had asked her what she was waiting for, she would have replied:

“I am waiting for the summer, for the summer brings Koma. He has 

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