My especial care was for my prisoner; his evidence was too important for me to leave him to chance. Such coolies as we could muster were wanted for our men, so in despair I pressed two honest citizens, shopkeepers, into my service, and with dire threats made them carry him in my _norimono_ (palanquin), for he was far too weak and exhausted to be able to walk. The two shopkeepers were intensely disgusted, and their protests that they were respectable burghers and ought not to be made to do the work of _etas_ (pariahs) were almost comic; but our blood was up and they had to do it. It was a melancholy procession home. As I walked by the side of Sir Harry’s horse he turned to me and said, “Sensation diplomacy this, Mitford.” It certainly was. When we reached home our beautiful temple was turned into a hospital. Our wounded men, bleeding as if their life must ebb out, lay patiently in the verandah, waiting their turn for the assistance of the surgeons, who, stripped to their shirts, seemed almost to multiply themselves, so swift and skilful were they. Shirts and sheets were being torn up into bandages, buckets of bloody water were being emptied and filled again. Everything one touched was sickening, wet, and red. It was a nightmare. Presently the head of the man whom Nakai had killed was brought in—a terrible sight. One awful triangular wound had laid bare part of the brain, and there was a gash from a sword on the right jaw. As soon as the prisoner’s wounds were dressed, Satow and I with a retainer of Sanjo Dainagon examined the prisoner. He was a beetle-browed, truculent-looking fellow with rolling black eyes, and his appearance was not improved by bloodstained rags, and a large head with a shock crop of wiry hair which, having abandoned the priesthood, he had just begun to let grow. He said: “My name is Ishikawa Samurō. I am a priest from a temple called Jōrenji, near Ōsaka. I left the Castle this morning determined to kill all the foreigners that I might meet. I came to Kiōto on the second day of this month to join the Mikado’s bodyguard, and I lodged at the temple called Hommanji in the Temple Street. I left it the day before yesterday and went to the Castle. I was in the first regiment at the Castle, but could not agree with my mates, so determined to regulate my conduct according to my own ideas. I set out to kill foreigners; I had no accomplice. I pray to be examined, and, if found guilty, to be executed and my crime made known throughout the Empire.”