projected too strongly upon the pages of his annals to
leave them quite legible. He had seen his elder brother and two of
the latter's three sons done to death. He had seen the "removal" of
several of his father's most trusted lieutenants. He had seen the
gradual upbuilding of the Hojo power on this hecatomb of victims.
That he perceived something of his own danger would seem to be a
natural inference. Yet if he entertained such apprehensions, he never
communicated them to his mother, Masa, who, from her place of high
prestige and commanding intellect, could have reshaped the issue.

The fact would appear to be that Hojo Yoshitoki's intrigues were too
subtle for the perception of Sanetomo or even of the lady Masa.
Yoshitoki had learned all the lessons of craft and cunning that his
father could teach and had supplemented them from the resources of
his own marvellously fertile mind. His uniformly successful practice
was to sacrifice the agents of his crimes in order to hide his own
connexion with them, and never to seize an opportunity until its
possibilities were fully developed. Tokimasa had feigned ignorance of
his daughter's liaison with Yoritomo, but had made it the occasion to
raise an army which could be directed either against Yoritomo or in
his support, as events ordered. There are strong reasons to think
that the vendetta of the Soga brothers was instigated by Tokimasa and
Yoshitoki, and that Yoritomo was intended to be the ultimate victim.

This was the beginning of a long series of intrigues which led to the
deaths of Yoriiye and two of his sons, of Hatakeyama Shigetada, of
Minamoto Tomomasa, of Wada Yoshimori, and of many a minor partisan of
the Yoritomo family. In the pursuit of his sinister design, there
came a time when Yoshitoki had to choose between his father and his
sister. He sacrificed the former unhesitatingly, and it is very
probable that such a choice helped materially to hide from the lady
Masa the true purport of his doings. For that it did remain hidden
from her till the end is proved by her failure to guard the life of
Sanetomo, her own son, and by her subsequent co-operation with his
slayer, Yoshitoki, her brother. A mother's heart would never
wittingly have prompted such a course.

There is a tradition that Sanetomo provoked the resentment of Masa
and Yoshitoki by accepting high offices conferred on him by
Kyoto--chunagon, and general of the Left division of the guards--in
defiance of Yor