excellency,” admitted the Japanese miserably. “Her mother was Nii-no-Ama (noble nun of second rank) and kin to our august Prince. She broke her vows to the Lord Buddha, desecrated and disgraced his temple. The gods visited their wrath upon her offspring. They gave it a body only—no soul, save that of the fox. She is beyond the pale, honored sir, and no clean being may look upon or touch her.”

The Tojin-san, sitting up erectly now, was holding his lower lip thoughtfully between thumb and forefinger.

“Your fox-woman then is some sort of outcast, who has lived all her life avoided by her kind?”

“She had the company of her degraded parents,” said the officer gruffly, “until she was the age of ten. Then a zealous band of former Danka (parishioners) assaulted the temple by fire and sword. The parents of the fox-woman met a deserved death, being literally torn to pieces before the very altar of Great Shaka himself.”

The Daimio’s officer paused, his little black eyes glittering with a fanatical light. Then the exhilaration dropped from his voice.

“But the ways of the Lord Buddha are strange. How could the devoted Danka conceive that Shaka would turn his wrath upon them also, for thus scorching his altar with unclean blood. Since the Restoration, excellency, our city’s history has been one of blood and poverty. Some assert the province is doomed. Others, more optimistic, that it is but passing through its new birth pains, and that, as of old, its history will be glorious.”

The Tojin-san puffed at his relighted pipe in meditative silence. Then, very quietly, he asked:

“Do you lay the misfortunes of your province upon this fox-woman, as you call her?”

“Aye!” said the officer almost fiercely. “The hand of Fate fell heaviest upon us after the assassination of the intruder. We have never recovered from the humiliations heaped upon us by—the countries of the West. The bombardment of beloved Kagoshima by the allied forces of the western nations followed almost instantly after the death by violence of—”

He stopped abruptly, and coughed in gruff alarm behind his now sheltering fan. He had been upon the verge of telling what had been forbidden.

The Tojin-san looked puzzled, baffled.

“I do not see the connection,” he said.

“Yet—it is so,” 

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