He settled himself back on the mat, his gaunt hands buried in his sleeves, and, snuffing the wick in the _andon_, she began to read the archaic "grass-writing." It was the _Shundai Zatsuwa_ of Kyuso Moro. "Be not _samurai_ through the wearing of two swords, but day and night have a care to bring no reproach on the name. When you cross your threshold and pass out through the gate, go as one who shall never return again. Thus shall you be ready for every adventure. The Buddhist is for ever to remember the five commandments and the _samurai_ the laws of chivalry. "All born as _samurai_, men and women, are taught from childhood that fidelity must never be forgotten. And woman is ever taught that this, with submission, is her chief duty. If in unexpected strait her weak heart forsakes fidelity, all her other virtues will not atone. "_Samurai_, men and women, the young and the old, regulate their conduct according to the precepts of Bushido, and a _samurai_, without hesitation, sacrifices life and family for lord and country." CHAPTER XIII THE WHORLS OF YELLOW DUST For a long time in her blue and white room Barbara lay awake, listening to the incessant chorus that came on the deepening mystery of the dark: the rustle of the pine-needles outside her window, the _kiri-kiri-kiri-kiri_ of a night-cricket on the sill, and the wavering chant of a toiling coolie keeping time to the thrust of his body as he hauled his heavy cart. The shadow of a twisted pine-branch crossed one of the windows, and in the infiltering moonlight she could see the yellow gleam of the gold-lacquer Buddha on the Sendai chest. She could imagine it the same image she had found as a little girl in the garret, and had made her pet delight. For an instant she seemed to be once more a child seated on her low stool before it, her hands tight-clasped, looking up into its immobile countenance, half-hoping, half-fearing those carven lips would speak. On the wings of this sensation came a childish memory of a day when her aunt had found her thus and had thought her praying to it. She remembered the look of frozen horror on her aunt's face and her own helpless mortification. For she did not know how to explain. She had had to write a verse from the Bible fifty times in her copybook: _Thou shalt have no other gods before Me._ And she had had to do half of them over because she had forgotten the capital M. That day her treasure had disappeared, and she had never seen it again.