To the men of the Warship _Onega_! It was true then the story. The story of the loss of the _Onega_ in the bay below, and the sale of the sunken wreck with all its contents to fishermen along the coast. The story of the finding of the corpses of the drowned sailors, all entangled among the wreckage, and of how the Japanese fishermen collected them reverently, saying, with the faith of the ancient Greeks, that their souls would wander restless and distressed unless they were laid in their graves and the funeral prayers sung over them. So they sent a petition to the great _Ijin San_ in Tokyo praying him to come to the temple of Ikkégami, that his dead brothers might have some one of their own race, if not of their own family, to perform the last solemn rites. And the Ambassador came to Ikkégami, and the long line of weather-beaten Japanese fishermen bore the western sailors up the hill to the temple, and buried them in the courtyard, under the silent trees, with all the rites of the Buddhist church. And they set up the wooden lath as over the grave of a brother, among the long lines of the tombstones of their fathers; but they wrote on it in the tongue of the stranger so that God and their countrymen might know their own again. And all this they did out of their own hearts, and with the money of their own earning. So the men of _Onega_ lie buried with Buddhist rites in a Buddhist churchyard, and the wooden lath above their graves is but another rail in the holy fence of the Japanese dead which encloses the temple. * * * * * The long arches of the sombre trees are dark and still. The blue sky above is without fleck or stain, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding is spread as a hand above the tree-tops. The men of the _Onega_ sleep well. VII THE LEGEND OF THE NOSELESS JIZŌ It was a great many years ago, but the stone Jizō stands there yet, just on the edge of the woods beyond the rice-fields. The blue cotton bib around his neck is new, the odd little piles of stones that balance on his shoulders, cuddle in his arms, or lie around his feet are larger, for kindly hearts have passed by since then, to pick up a stone and carry it to Jizō, who helps the souls of the little dead children crying naked on the banks of the Sai-no-Kawara, because the old hag Shozuka-no-Baba has taken their clothes away, and will not let them pass over into the happy land beyond, but keeps them piling stones on the banks of the Buddhist Styx, and crying bitterly. And Jizō sits there by the roadside still, the same benevolent smile on his shaven face, still holding the pilgrim’s staff with its metal rings in one hand, and the jewel which brings all wisdom in the other. Only he has no nose. He lost it thirty years ago, the day little Dicky James came running up the road, his new hatchet clutched in his hand.