The next day there was a review of some five hundred men in a sort of tatterdemalion European dress, some with boots, some without, those who had them being as “justly vain” as Sir Plume “of amber snuff-box and the nice conduct of a clouded cane.” The drill was capital. In the evening I left for Yedo in the _Salamis_ with the Admiral. Satow went to Sasaki in Tosa with Sir Harry to investigate the case of the _Icarus_ murders. The Tosa people, who, as I have said, were ultimately proved to be innocent, with Gotō as spokesman, took up a very dignified position. Yōdo (the _de facto_ ruler of the clan, though he had nominally become _inkiyō_ (retired) whom Satow visited) declared that if his men were proved guilty he would punish them; if they were innocent nothing should stir him from his line of conduct. It must have been galling to Sir Harry to be told by Gotō that he was allowing his temper to get the better of his discretion. A dignified demeanour is the only attitude to observe with the Japanese, who, whatever their faults may be, are gentlemen to their finger-tips. Bluster does not succeed, but that was a lesson which our chief, with all his great qualities, never learned, and in this case he was completely worsted. Satow remained at Nagasaki till the 7th of November, so I was all alone at Yedo in my little temple Monriuin. As a precaution I had the walks all round the garden strewn with cockle-shells to sound an alarm in the event of there being any unwelcome visitors after dark. One night I was awakened about twelve o’clock by the crunching of my faithful guardian cockles. I jumped up and lighted candles and lamps, roused the servants, gave my sword and revolver to my Chinese servant, Lin Fu, upon whom I could depend, and stood at the chief door with my Spencer rifle. The ruffians, seeing that we were ready for them, made off. There were five or six of them, as I knew, for it had been raining heavily and the following morning I found the marks in the grass where they had slid in a sitting position down the little hill, which was deeply scored with their posteriors and heels—mighty unpleasant! I was too near the evilly-reputed wine-shops of Shinagawa, famous like the wynds of Old Edinburgh for brawls between the clans, and as the haunts of the Jō-i, the fanatics opposed to foreign intercourse. Another time, as I was leaving home in the morning to go to the Legation, I saw the dead body of a Samurai lying in a pool of blood outside my gate. It was covered with a piece of matting, but the head had been carried off to be deposited, according to the strict rules of _Kataki-uchi_ (vendetta), upon the grave of an enemy killed by last night’s victim in some previous quarrel. These were quite everyday occurrences in the Yedo of what the Japanese now call “the olden time” (_mukashi_)—that is the period before the revolution, only forty-eight years ago!