Smash, smash! This time something had smashed, and Jizō’s stone nose lay at his feet. Dicky stooped to pick it up, exultant, and in the momentary pause heard angry voices among the fields, and feet coming swiftly up the road behind him. Then Dicky forgot all about “martyrdom” and ran as fast as he could go, across the bank of the rice-field in front of him, up the hill beyond, his hatchet clutched in one hand, and Jizō’s stone nose in the other. It was the rice-field that saved him, because the men had to go round, but their shouts brought out the village, and the sight of Jizō, noseless, sent all the angry “heathen” up the hill in chase. I do not think they would have hurt him if they had caught him, for the Japanese are not fanatical, and they are very kind to children. It was just this feeling that made them so angry now. To think that any one could injure Jizō; Jizō the friend of those in trouble, the comforter of women in travail, and the keeper of the baby souls crying naked on the dark banks of the Sai-no-Kawara. I do not think they would have hurt Dicky, but the whole village came out to see, and the men and boys ran up the hills around shouting: “_Nan des ka? Nan des ka?_ What is it? What is it?” And Dicky in his terror ran until his little legs gave way under him, and panting he threw himself on the ground under the trees. The shouts had died away a long while, and it was growing dark in the wood before Dicky stirred. It was darker still when at last he crept cautiously down the hill and over the rice-fields towards the stone statue of Jizō. He was very tired now, and very hungry, but the memory of the angry voices calling after him in the hills made him afraid to go back through the village, and by this time the tide was up. So Dicky sat down by the side of Jizō in the growing darkness and waited. And all his nurse’s stories of Jizō and the little children came into his mind. He looked up at Jizō, smiling still his large benevolent smile, and crept nearer. * * * * * It was quite dark that evening when they found Dicky, his head peacefully laid to sleep on Jizō’s feet, utterly worn out with the pangs and the excitement of his martyrdom, his little hatchet fallen on the ground, but one grubby fist fast clutching something that even in his sleep he held tight. But Dicky’s taste for martyrdom had gone, and once, to his father’s horror, he was heard to declare that he “wished he was a heathen because he would like to say his prayers to Jizō.” In the deepest depths of his pocket, next to his clasp-knife and his favourite ally taw, there lived for many years a small stone object that he sometimes took out and looked at when he was quite alone. And Dicky had serious doubts at times about the goodness of the martyrs, and the sinfulness of the heathen, while his ideas on idols underwent a radical change.