"No idle prate," retorted Zembei. "Listen. By deputation--of which you would not form one--we humbly prayed and entreated the local counsellors of my lord:--the leeches--to be more lenient; but they replied that they were only tools, exactly performing his bidding. Then, after anxious thought and discussion, gathering together in secret the chiefs of a hundred villages, at peril of our heads, we resolved to draw up and send a solemn petition, signed by all, to my lord's golden dwelling at Ki[^y]oto, imploring justice. Twelve of the most respected elders, chosen from the assembly by lot, undertook the dangerous task. Clad in their grass rain-coats, they sallied forth, and arrived in time at Ki[^y]oto." "Idiots!" scoffed Koshiu. "Did they pay a long farewell to wives and little ones?" "Arrived at the Golden House, they were received at the gate with blows and contumely." "What else did they expect?" inquired the farmer--"to be feasted in the room of honour? Other lords perhaps, dreading public exposure of their misdeeds, might, if pushed, hasten to repair a wrong--the Hojos never; for the Hojos have no shame." Miné pouted, and rapped the pavement with impatient clog. "To be sweeping is always to be unjust!" she cried shrilly, from the border of the pond. "There are good as well as bad in every family." "Hush, child, hush! Be dutiful!" reproved her mother. "Thou wast bewitched by soft empty speeches and a bold bearing. It was a bad day for thee when the lord Sampei came among us!" "He is good and brave and generous," returned the girl, with burning face, "my lord Sampei!" Miné cooed out the name that was on every one's lips, with such an exceeding abandonment of tenderness as startled her father into attention. "More words less sense!" he remarked testily. "My lord Sampei! what hast thou to do with him or his? My lord Sampei forsooth! Wouldst be a Hojo's concubine? Never! I'd see thee dead first." "The maid speaks not untruly," nodded Rokubei. "Sampei is in all things, save his name, unlike his brother. Through his mother Masago, the holy Abbess, he has peasant blood in his veins." "And she," chimed in the girl, "the late lord's concubine, although of peasant stock, is worthy to be noble. As good as her son is the Abbess Masago. Cold and severe, no doubt, but just and lovable." "How the child prates!" cried Madam Koshiu. "The lord Sampei has been absent these five years, skull-cracking, and is but just returned. What canst thou know of him? When he sailed, thou wert a little maid, and even than now more foolish." "From his mother I have heard of him," admitted the blushing girl.