y dead--"

Both bowed and murmured again.

"And beyond his most excellent vengeance."

"Nevertheless," said Namishima, finally, "the august conscience within
informs me that we have brought him up honorably well!"

"There is excellently no doubt of it!" agreed Kiomidzu.

They bowed to each other.

For a while there was silence and the tapping of the pipes. Then they
spoke of a new and weightier matter.

Said Namishima--and here the little boy's eyes bulged:--

"If the soul of our brother continues to wander in the Meido, it will
not be chargeable, now, in the heavens, to us, but to him. We have kept
the lamps alight. We have taught him honor."

"We are too aged, also," agreed Kiomidzu, "to redeem him forth unto the
way to the heavens by dying in his stead the great death. It is for his
son!"

"In us, besides," Namishima went on, "the gods could not be augustly
deceived. But the child has his name."

"Therefore, should he die the great death, the merciful gods may be
deceived by the name into thinking it he who died at Jokoji. In that
case he would not only be redeemed to the way to the heavens, but on
this earth his name would be graciously added to honor."

So said he from Kobe. And he from Osaka:--

"For the gods are merciful!"

"So merciful, I sometimes abjectly think, that they desire to be
deceived, for our peace of mind."

"Or, at least," mended Kiomidzu, to whom this was a trifle too much,
"they will close their eyes while we augustly do it."

Namishima disliked a trifle the correction of his brother:--

"Do not the gods so act upon the minds of their creatures that they
remember or forget? Well, then! It is true that now others know that our
brother died on the rebel side at Jokoji. But do we not know that, in
the course of much time, the gods can make this to be forgotten, and
make to be remembered that he died on the emperor's side?"

"Yea, if his son should die for the emperor."

"Yea! For the name is the same!"

"And I have had a sign in a dream," said Kiomidzu, lowering his voice a
little more. "Before me stood a tall god--"

They both bowed and rubbed their hands.

"--I knew neither his august name nor his presence. But his face shone
as the sun, so that it is certain he was a god who can see the end from
the beginning, and all between. And thus he spake: 'Rise and light the
lamps and burn the sweet and bitter incense. For Shijiro Arisuga, he who
died at Jokoji, shall have a cri