Bob Fawcett had a half-smile upon his face as he walked back through the park and the crowded streets to his hotel. It was his fourth day in Tokio, and he had already seen many strange things; nothing, perhaps, stranger than the deadly earnestness with which the little Japanese had sped after an enemy who could have crushed him with ease. "I wonder what it was all about?" he thought. "Plucky little Hop o’ my Thumb! I suppose he’s the stuff of which the Japanese army is made." He would have liked to know what had brought about the unequal fight, but speculation was vain; and besides, it was nearly dinner-time, and the meals at his hotel were punctually served. Punctuality was, in Bob’s eyes, the only virtue the hotel possessed. He did not like the heavy carpets, the cumbrous four-poster in his bed-room, the general stuffiness that resembled only too closely the fusty musty atmosphere of certain hotels at home. He wished he could have put up at a Japanese place, lived in the Japanese way, eaten Japanese food, for he was of an enquiring turn of mind. But he had been strongly advised to put up at a house run on European lines, and for the present he could not but recognize that the advice was probably good. On arriving in Tokio four days before, and reporting himself at the Japanese ministry of marine, he found that his services were not immediately required. He was asked to hold himself in readiness to assume his duties at a few hours’ notice; meanwhile his time was his own. It was unlucky that his arrival in Japan was in the very middle of the New-year celebrations, for business being at almost a total stand-still for a fortnight on end, the two English merchants to whom he had brought letters of introduction had gone away with their families for a holiday, and among the two million people in Tokio there was not one that he knew. There was company at the hotel, to be sure, but it consisted chiefly of tourists and globe-trotters eager to "do" everything, and Bob had never had a taste for frantic sight-seeing. He accordingly chose his own course, and wandered about pretty much by himself, taking the keenest interest in the novel scenes that everywhere met his eyes.