hat Kiki-Tsum had ever
gazed on such a thing. He looked carefully at it, and to his intense
astonishment saw the image of a brown face, with dark, intelligent eyes,
and a look of awestruck wonderment expressed on its features.

Kiki-Tsum dropped on his knees, and gazing earnestly at the object he
held in his hand, he whispered, "It is my sainted father. How could his
portrait have come here? Is it, perhaps, a warning of some kind for me?"

He carefully folded the precious treasure up in his handkerchief, and
put it in the large pocket of his loose blouse. When he went home that
night he hid it away carefully in a vase which was scarcely ever
touched, as he did not know of any safer place in which to deposit it.
He said nothing of the adventure to his young wife, for, as he said to
himself "Women are curious, and then, too, _sometimes_ they are given to
talking," and Kiki-Tsum felt that it was too reverent a matter to be
discussed by neighbours, this finding of his dead father's portrait in
the street.

For some days Kiki-Tsum was in a great state of excitement. He was
thinking of the portrait all the time, and at intervals he would leave
his work and suddenly appear at home to take a furtive look at
his treasure.

[Illustration: "ALWAYS WITH THE SAME SOLEMN EXPRESSION."]

Now, in Japan, as in other countries, mysterious actions and irregular
proceedings of all kinds have to be explained to a wife. Lili-Tsee did
not understand why her husband kept appearing at all hours of the day.
Certainly he kissed her every time he came in like this. At first she
was satisfied with his explanation when he told her that he only ran in
for a minute to see her pretty face. She thought it was really quite
natural on his part, but when day after day he appeared, and always with
the same solemn expression on his face, she began to wonder in her heart
of hearts whether he was telling her the whole truth. And so Lili-Tsee
fell to watching her husband's movements, and she noticed that he never
went away until he had been alone in the little room at the back of
the house.

[Illustration: "WHAT WAS IT SHE SAW?"]

Now the Japanese women are as persevering as any others when there is a
mystery to be discovered, and so Lili-Tsee set herself to discover this
mystery. She hunted day after day to see if she could find some trace of
anything in that little room which was at all unusual, but she found
nothing. One day, however, she happened to