"Have you been to Nikko?" This was a malicious chance. "We were afraid to leave Tokio for fear of not getting to the front." "Shall we see much fighting?" "I think so--from a high place. You cannot see in the valleys--the kow-liang is too high to see over even on horseback. Yes, you will see the fight." Then we shook hands again, saluted the staff and departed. The Japanese soldier had Fuji behind a tree--and he was smiling. "Warui desu!" he said, and he looked at me with approval that I dared ride him; for Fuji was Japanese and bad, and Japanese are not good horsemen. At any rate, he followed me to the gate and held Fuji twice more before we finally got away. On the way back to captivity Laguerié turned a somersault over his white donkey's head. He rose, spluttering, between the donkey's forelegs. It looked for a moment as though the donkey were riding Laguerié. * * * * * At sunset, next day, the Irishman said: "Come with me," and I followed unquestioning, because questioning was useless. Out the compound we went, through narrow streets and up a rocky little hill in the centre of the village, where we could look over the low tiled roofs--here and there a tree was growing up through them--over the mud-enclosures, the high-notched city walls, the stretch of white sand beyond, a broader stretch of green still farther on, slit with the one flashing cimeter-like sweep of the river--and then over the low misty hills to the tender after-glow, above which wisp-like, darkening clouds hung motionless. "Greatest people in the world," said the Irishman with an all-encompassing sweep of his right arm. "All happy--all peaceful. The soldier lowest here in the social scale--in Japan, the highest. Home the unit. Tilled the same soil for countless generations--always plenty to eat. We forced opium on 'em with war in '52. To think they've got to be cursed with our blasted, blasting materialism." I had been through all that with the Irishman many times before, so we went on. From a gateway a cur barked viciously at us. An old man came out to call him in and the Irishman took the Chinaman by the arm and pointed to a walled enclosure on the extreme summit. "I want to get in there." How, on sight, he wins the confidence of these people--men, women, and children--how he makes himself understood, not knowing a word of Chinese, I don't know. Straightway the old fellow went with us, the Irishman clinging to his arm, pounded on the heavy door and left us. "What is it?" "A monastery," said the Irishman.