And, in the Season of Greatest Cold, while the snow whirled in feathery flakes over all the Province of Echizen, and the winds blew in laughing, whispering murmurs through the glistening camphor and pine trees, across the sacred bosom of Lake Biwa, and over the snow-crowned mountains between, the Tojin-san came to Fukui, the “Well of Blessing.”

II

The room was so large that even with the seven lighted andon and the three ancient takahiras glimmering dully where they hung from the raftered ceiling overhead, it was chiefly in shadow. Set at intervals against the sliding walls were a few large pieces of heavy black-walnut furniture, grotesque objects in the otherwise completely empty chamber. The room itself was cold, but a kotatsu in the centre of the room had been filled with live coals, and over this the Tojin-san crouched. He sat upon the floor, close to the fire-frame, his knees drawn up, his hands encircling them.

The

After a long and tortuous journey over land and water, by boat, by horse, by kurumma, and often on foot—a never-ending, long-winding, cold journey, the Tojin-san was at last at home! This was Fukui, where he had contracted to live for seven years of his life; this vast, empty, bleak mansion was his house.

He had started upon the journey with an alert and quickened pulse, and an ardent ambition to serve, to raise up, to love this strange people to whom he had pledged himself. A short sojourn was made in Tokio and Kioto—days of sheer delight in a charm so new it intoxicated. Then, leaving the open ports, under the escort sent by the Prince of Echizen, he had taken finally that plunge into the great unknown country itself, where only half a dozen foreigners had been before him.

The journey had been one of many weeks. Crossing waters in a fragile craft, which tossed and heaved with every tide, he had come to know the true meaning of the Japanese saying that “a sea voyage is an inch of hell.”

For days his party had been snow-bound on a desolate mountain, far from even the smallest village or town, and, when finally they had issued forth, it was only to encounter new perils, in savage-souled ronins who hung about the vicinity of the Tojin-san’s party, their narrow, wicked eyes intent upon his destruction. How many white men before him had started upon a similar journey, in other provinces of Japan, and met the then common fate—a stab in the back, or in the dark! And the punishments, the indemnities, the 

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