little one; come, give me that welcome home.”

Her hand unclinched, the doll dropped to the floor. With a sudden impulse she ran blindly towards him, and he caught her in his arms with a great hug, which was as familiar to her as life itself.

IX

It was late in December, the time of Great Snow. Komazawa was still in Sendai, and Hyacinth had been taken from the school. She was now twelve years of age, still undeveloped in body and childish in mind.

Hyacinth, like most impressionable children, had quickly succumbed to the influence of the school-teacher. In his hands she had yielded like plaster to the sculptor. Out of crude, almost wild, material had been developed what seemed on the surface an admirable example of a Japanese child.

Komazawa, fresh from four years of training at an English school and intimate association with English students and professors, now set about the task of undermining all that the sensei had taught Hyacinth.

This was no light task. Hyacinth could not unlearn in a few months that which had practically become ingrained. Quite useless it was, therefore, for Komazawa to seek to turn the child’s mind to a new and alien point of view, when, too, this view-point was, in a measure, an acquired thing with Koma himself. Yet he was patient, and labored unceasingly.

No; the people in the West were not all savages and barbarians.

“Did they not look like the Reverend Blount?” would inquire his small pupil.

“Yes, somewhat like him.”

“Ah, then, they perhaps were not savages, but they certainly were monsters.”

“No; they are very fine people—high, great.”

“But only monsters and evil spirits have hair growing from the chin and awful, blue-glass eyes,” protested Hyacinth.

Whereupon Koma quietly brought a small mirror from his room, held it before her face, and bade her look within.

She stared curiously and somewhat timorously.

“What do you see?” he inquired, quietly.

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