The square pit with its charcoal fire was in front here, and we had to pass behind it to reach the unoccupied space at the back. As we crawled over the matting darkened by our own shadows, for the only light came through the open front, we almost stumbled over some one rolled up in a bundle of _futon_. It was the old, old woman of the morning. She was asleep, in the deep, dull sleep of utter exhaustion, and her wrinkled chin, dropped down, trembled, as she slept. It was very cold in the hut, and we too were glad of _futon_ and egg-bowls of hot tea, glad to eat our tinned tongue and slices of dry bread, and gladder still just to stay wrapt in the _futon_, and sleepily rest. The landlord, like an image, sat on his heels in the well and never stirred. From time to time he put fresh pieces of charcoal on the fire with a pair of brass chopsticks; then the smoke, sweeping in dense waves through the room, would make us all cough abruptly, till it melted slowly away and the room was still. Beyond the lava-wall the grey-white clouds lay herded as a fold of sheep, and we watched them mounting up and up, rolling against the wall, rising above it, sending thin wreaths and wisps of mists across the pathway, which stayed like ribbons in the air, and then sinking, dropped down again. Often they came up, and always rolled back beaten. Fuji’s summit is above the clouds, they could not scale it. In twos and threes and little groups, the white-robed pilgrims stopped to sit on the edge of the matting and drink tea, and eat innumerable balls of rice rolled in a soft grated substance that looked to be, but was not, cheese--a thing unknown in this milkless land. So the pilgrims sat on the matting and ate their rice-balls, which the landlord, without moving his body a hair’s-breadth, produced and rolled, and sprinkled, and handed. And the acrid smoke from the charcoal fire drifted across the room, filling it. * * * * * Quite suddenly I awoke out of my sleep, to find some one on the floor beside me waking the old, old woman. It took her a long time to struggle out of that dense, deep sleep into a state of even drowsy consciousness. She sat up, bewildered, and when they told her she must go, get up, climb all that weary way down again, the old face seemed to shrink together in hopeless despair. There was a long dreary pause. Then the old, old woman bowed, the smile of courtesy upon her worn old face. “_Yoroshū gozaimas_” (“As it honourably pleases you”), she said. And rising, she tottered out. This flesh was more than weak, but the spirit was the spirit of her race--it sacrificed all things. * * * * *