One difficulty with which I had to contend was the danger of appearing to interfere in the internal affairs of the country. No foreigner’s safety or welfare was at stake. There was not a single missionary concerned. The foreign legations then could not do more than offer friendly advice and that, too, in the most discreet fashion. Day after day and week after week we carried on our weary debates; but at any rate I was at last able to obtain the assurance that there would be no massacre, no such persecution, no such wholesale cruelty, as had stained the early days of the seventeenth century. So far it was a triumph, well worth the pains it cost, but I was certain that there must be some temporary sacrifice to the old-world prejudices of the Court, which were still too strong to be altogether ignored. That sacrifice would take the shape of deportation. When in the month of August I returned to Yokohama I found Sir Harry Parkes just about to start for a conference with the colleagues. “What am I to tell them?” he asked. I answered that he might assure them that there was no danger, such as had at one time been dreaded, there would be no executions—no torture—that the utmost that would be done would be a breaking up of the community at Urakami, that the families would be distributed among various clans, and that I did not believe that even that measure of intolerance would be of long duration. Sir Harry was delighted with the result of my negotiations and went off in great glee to reassure the colleagues. It was really a great victory. My forecast was correct; though, in 1870, there was a fresh outburst of fanatical zeal and many families were exiled, in 1872, with the new and generous order of things, the exiles were restored to their homes; missionaries are now free all over the country, and who will may be baptized. In spite of the pleasure of having independent and responsible work to do I confess that I was not sorry when my exile at Ōsaka came to an end. It had been a lonely time in the midst of an obviously hostile community. The heat had been intense—the work very laborious, no rest from morning till night, food none too plentiful, though, indeed, there was little temptation to eat. I was, moreover, run down and out of health. So I was delighted when my good friend du Petit Thouars sent to say that he was leaving for Yokohama and would give me a berth, as he heard that I, too, was to rejoin my chief. Those were halcyon days on board the _Dupleix_. The too often storm-vexed Inland Sea was a dream of beauty, its countless smiles rippling under a cloudless sky. The ship was the perfection of comfort, the cook a genius, and my host—one of the most agreeable companions, a man whose goodness of heart was equalled by his wit and the catholicity of his reading. His men adored him, and no wonder!