y of combat which they had. But, as often happens, their care and
their prayers availed them nothing, while their carelessness and their
repinings availed much. Of that I shall stop and tell: the picture--the
flying of the carp--how all the life of the little boy was changed in
one night,--so that he thought no more of Yone, the lanterns and the
flowers, but only of being a soldier.

It was that day when he was ten. All his relatives were present and they
flew a tremendous number of paper carp. For you are to know that this is
the way the gods have of telling one on one's birthday in Japan, whether
one is to be as strong and virile as the open-mouthed carp in a swift
wind, or as flaccid as they when there is no wind. The gods were kind
and sent a propitious day. The carp stood out, straining upon their
poles so that some of them broke loose and whirled cloud-ward--whereat
the multitude of Arisuga's relatives shouted with joy. For this was an
august omen of great good. Arisuga cared nothing for the omen. But the
carp eddying upward, and those straining on their poles, were very fine.

The tired, happy little boy had been put early to bed, while his uncles
remained to smoke and gossip. For one was from Kobe and the other was
from Osaka, and they did not meet as often as they could have wished.

For a long time there was no sound save the tapping of their pipes
against the metal rim of the hibachi as they were emptied of their ashes
to be filled again. This is still much the way of ceremonious old men in
Japan. They have learned the comradeship of silence.

Presently this sound of the tapping pipes woke the little boy from his
dreaming; and hearing whisperings in the room beyond he crept from his
futons to the fusuma, which he silently parted to look and listen.

His small eyes grew greater as he saw that his two uncles were still
there, and greater yet as he observed that they gesticulated in the
direction of the picture of "The Great Death" while they whispered.

Now this was a thing which had always troubled him: that they whispered
together about that picture, and that, somehow, he was included in the
mystery. It had hung there at the tokonoma since he could remember. He
had been taught to reverence it; for nowhere have pictures more
influence than in Japan.

It was divided in the horizontal middle into two panels. In that below
was carnage amazing. On the one side were the hosts of the emperor under
the brocade