and Tokimune (Goro),
having sworn to avenge their father, broke into Yoritomo's camp and
took the head of their enemy. The elder was killed in the enterprise;
the younger, captured and beheaded. Yoritomo would fain have saved
Goro's life, though the youth declared his resolve not to survive his
brother. But the Kamakura chief was constrained to yield to the
demands of Suketsune's son. He, however, marked his appreciation of
Juro and Goro's filial piety by carefully observing their last
testament, and by exonerating the Soga estate from the duty of paying
taxes in order that funds might be available for religious rites on
account of the spirits of the brothers.

This encouragement of fidelity may well have been dictated by selfish
policy rather than by moral conviction. Yet that Yoritomo took every
conspicuous opportunity of asserting the principle must be recorded.
Thus, he publicly declared Yasuhira a traitor for having done to
death his guest, Yoshitsune, though in so doing Yasuhira obeyed the
orders of Yoritomo himself; he executed the disloyal retainer who
took Yasuhira's head, though the latter was then a fugitive from the
pursuit of the Kamakura armies, and he pardoned Yuri Hachiro, one of
Yasuhira's officers, because he defended Yasuhira's reputation in
defiance of Yoritomo's anger.

Gratitude Yoritomo never failed to practise within the limit of
policy. Rumour said that he had fallen in his first battle at
Ishibashi-yama. Thereupon, Miura Yoshiaki, a man of eighty-nine, sent
out all his sons to search for Yoritomo's body, and closing his
castle in the face of the Taira forces, fell fighting. Yoritomo
repaid this loyal service by appointing Yoshiaki's son, Wada
Yoshimori, to be betto of the Samurai-dokoro, one of the very highest
posts in the gift of the Kamakura Government. Again, it will be
remembered that when, as a boy of fourteen, Yoritomo had been
condemned to death by Kiyomori, the lad's life was saved through the
intercession of Kiyomori's step-mother, Ike, who had been prompted by
Taira no Munekiyo. After the fall of the Taira, Yoritomo prayed the
Court to release Ike's son, Yorimori, and to restore his rank and
estates, while in Munekiyo's case he made similar offers but they
were rejected.

Towards his own kith and kin, however, he showed himself implacable.
In Yoshitsune's case it has been indicated that there was much to
awaken Yoritomo's suspicions. But his brother Noriyori had no
qualities at