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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,” said the Japanese vaguely, shifting his eyes from the averted faces of the samourai guard.

Said the American forcefully:

“It seems to me an amazing thing that to-day when you are frankly hoping to join the nations of enlightenment, you still give yourselves up to barbarous persecution because of what, after all, is nothing but a legend fit for children only. For my part, I intend to sweep from my house vigorously the absurd belief I find actually seated on my hearth-stone.”