Close to the tomb of Nichiren stood a Japanese Salvationist, a zealous pimply young man, wearing the red and blue uniform of General Booth with _kaiseigun_ (World-saving Army) in Japanese letters round his staff cap. He stood in front of a screen, on which the first verse of "Onward, Christian Soldiers," was written in a Japanese translation. An assistant officiated at a wheezy harmonium. The tune was vaguely akin to its Western prototype; and the two evangelists were trying to induce a tolerant but uninterested crowd to join in the chorus. Everywhere beggars were crawling over the compound in various states of filth. Some, however, were so ghastly that they were excluded from the temple enclosure. They had lined up among the trunks of the cryptomeria trees, among the little grey tombs with their fading inscriptions and the moss-covered statues of kindly Buddhas. Asako gave a penny into the crooked hand of one poor sightless wretch. "Oh, no!" cried cousin Sadako; "do not go near to them. Do not touch them. They are lepers." Some of them had no arms, or had mere stumps ending abruptly in a red and sickening object like a bone which a dog has been chewing. Some had no legs, and were pulled along on little wheeled trolleys by their less dilapidated companions in misfortune. Some had no features. Their faces were mere glabrous disks, from which eyes and nose had completely vanished; only the mouth remained, a toothless gap fringed with straggling hairs. Some had faces abnormally bloated, with powerful foreheads and heavy jowls, which gave them an expression of stony immobility like Byzantine lions. All were fearfully dirty and covered with sores and lice. The people passing by smiled at their grim unsightliness, and threw pennies to them, for which they scrambled and scratched like beasts. _Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]_. Asako's relatives spent the day in eating, drinking and gossiping to the rhythm of the interminable prayer. It was a perfect day of autumn, which is the sweetest season in Japan. A warm bright sun had been shining on the sumptuous colours of the waning year, on the brilliant reds and yellows which clothed the neighbouring hills, on the broad brown plain with its tesselated design of bare rice-fields, on the brown villas and cottages huddled in their fences of evergreen like birds in their nests, on the red trunks of the cryptomeria trees, on the brown carpet of matted pine-needles, on the grey crumbling stones of the old graveyard, on the high-pitched temple roofs, and on the inconsequential swarms of humanity drifting to their devotions, casting their pennies into the great alms-trough in front of the shrine, clanging the brass bell with a prayer for good luck, and drifting home again with their bewildered, happy children.