“The descendants of the Emperor shall live for a thousand times ten thousand years, until the little stones are grown great rocks, until the great rocks are all green with moss.” XI AND SHE WAS A WIDOW _O Mmé San_ looked into her son’s eyes and saw that they were sad. It was in the month of the plum-blossom, when throughout the length and breadth of Japan the soldiers of the Empire were daily leaving for the front; for the war with Russia had been declared, and the rich were giving of their wealth, the poor of their poverty, and every one of his sons. In Tokyo the rival newspapers had agreed to bury their political differences until the war was over. An Osaka merchant had offered his priceless art treasures for sale. On the western coast the poor fishermen, forbidden to fish in the sea of Japan because of the danger, sent a petition to the Government asking to be allowed to go out “as scouts.” Noble students on the far-off banks of the Sungari were risking an ignominious death as they crouched beneath dark bridges with dynamite in their hands. Everywhere, every one was giving, giving, giving. Even in this remote country town each day mothers saw their sons march away, and bid them a last “_Sayonara_.” O Mmé San had been waiting many days, expecting, hoping, dreading, and to-night in the sad eyes of her son she read the long delayed summons. “He has heard at last,” she thought. And for one moment her heart grew very tender over this, her fatherless son, her only boy. Then she put away her weakness, for she was the wife and the daughter of _samurai_, and she knew that it was the proudest privilege of a warrior to fight for his lord, that it was the most sacred duty of her race to give her life and her son’s life to the Emperor. So, looking towards the curved swords of the family, which lay on the _tokonoma_, she began to talk of her husband, of the grim old _samurai_ his fathers, and to tell old tales of battle and of death that made her boy’s eyes glisten, and then look sadder than before. But he said nothing, and O Mmé San wondered. She knew that he had been down to the Prefecture that morning. O Kiku San’s two sons had left last week, O Hana’s eldest was going to-morrow. Surely her boy must know when he was leaving, or why did his eyes look so sad? Then she began to tell him of all the plans she had thought of for managing without him, for they were poor. And at last her son looked up, and said, very gently as he took her hand: “Honourably trouble not; as for leaving, it is not for me.” And this time it was O Mmé San’s turn to be silent. When dinner was over her son went out to his work, and O Mmé San wondered and wondered. The wife and daughter of a _samurai_ she was eager to give, give even her only son for _Dai Nippon_, and the Son of Heaven. And yet her boy was not going, what could it mean?