There was a small figure in the roadway, however, of whom no one took account--a six year old. Ishikichi had not gone to the _hanami_ that day. For many hours that long afternoon, while his mother cared for the sick father, he had beat the tiny drum that soothed a baby's fret, comforted by the promise that he should be waked in the great hour when the crowd came home. Stretched on his worn _f'ton_ that night, he had puzzled over the situation--the hard, blank fact that because they had no money, they must give up the shop, which was the only home he knew. When they took his father away to the _byo-in_, the sick-house, what would he and his mother and the baby-_San_ do? Would they stand, like the _kadots'ke_, playing a _samisen_ at people's doors? It was not honorably pleasant to be a _kadots'ke_! Only men could earn money, and it would be so long before he became a man. So he had been pondering when he went to sleep. Now, standing in the road, he heard the hum of the rushing motor, and a quick thought,--born of that instinct of sacrifice for the parent, that is woven, a golden thread, in the woof of the Japanese soul--darted into his baby brain. One of the big fire-wagons of the _seiyo-jin_ was coming! When the carriage killed Toru, his playmate, the foreigner had sent much money to Toru's house. He was not sorry any more, because the white-faced man whom he liked, who lived in the temple, had told him what a fine thing it had been. For Toru's honorable father had been fighting with the _Gaki_, the no-rice-devils--it was almost like a war--and Toru had died just as the brave soldiers did in battle. A great purpose flooded the little soul. Was he not brave, too? So, as Bersonin, with a snarl, shook off the hand of the chauffeur and threw the throttle wide open, Ishikichi did not scamper with the rest. With his hands tightly clenched in his patched _kimono_, his huge clogs clattering on the roadway, he ran straight into the path of the hurtling mass of steel. There was a sudden, sickening jolt. The car leaped forward, dragging something beneath it that made no sound. The chauffeur hurled himself across the seat on the gear, and the automobile stopped with a grinding discord of screeching pistons. A surge of people came around it--a wave without outcry, but holding a hushed murmur like the sea. _Shoji_ were opening, doorways filling the street with light. A man bent and drew something gently from between the wheels. With a writhing oath the expert wrenched at the clutch. "Go on!" he said savagely. "How dare you stop without my orders?" The Japanese made no reply, but the arms that braced the wheel were rigid as steel.