Opposite the gate, a hedged lane opened, into which she turned, and presently the song ceased. She had come to the newly built Chapel. Her father's name was on the household list of the temple across the way, but she herself walked each Sunday to Ts'kiji, to attend the bishop's Japanese service in the Cathedral. When, influenced by a school-mate, she had wished to become a Christian, the old _samurai_ had interposed no objection. With the broad tolerance of the esoteric Buddhist, to whom all pure faiths are good, he had allowed her to choose for herself. She had grown to love the strangely new and beautiful worship with its singing, its service in a tongue that she could understand, its Bible filled with marvelous stories of old heroes, and with vivid imagery like that of the _Kojiki_, the "Record of Ancient Matters" or the _Man-yoshu_, the "Collection of a Myriad Leaves," over whose archaic characters her father was always poring. She had ceased to visit the temple, but otherwise the change had made little difference in her placid life. With the simplicity with which the Japanese of to-day kneels with equal faith before a plain _Shinto_ shrine and a golden altar of Buddha, she had continued the daily home observances. Each morning she cleaned the _butsu-dan_--refilled its tiny lamp with vegetable oil, freshened its incense-cup and water bowl, and dusted its golden shrine of Kwan-on which held the scroll inscribed with the spirit names of a hundred ancestors, and the _ihai_, or mortuary tablet, of her dead mother. Though she no longer prayed before it, it still signified to her the invisible haunting of the dead--the continuing loving presence of that mother who waited for her in the _Meidoland_. For many days Haru had watched the progress of the Chapel building. The Cathedral was a good two miles distant, but this was near her home; here she would be able to attend more than the weekly Sunday service. To-night, as she looked at the cross shining in the moonlight, she thought it very beautiful. A tiny symbol like it, made of white enamel, was hung on a little chain about her neck. It had been given her by the bishop the day of her confirmation. She drew this out and swung it about her finger as she walked on. In the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods were no huge and gloomy compounds. It was a roadway of humbler shops and homes, bordered with mazes of lantern fire, and lively with pedestrians. At a meager shop, pitifully small, whose _shoji_ were wide open, Haru paused. A smoky oil lamp swung from the ceiling, and under its glow, a woman knelt on the worn _tatamé_. Beside her, on a pillow, lay a newborn baby, and she was soothing its slumber by softly beating a tiny drum close to its ear. She nodded and smiled to Haru's salutation. "_Hai! Ojo-San_," she said. "_Go kigen yo!_ Deign augustly to enter."