"Come, oh come--my lover, come!" Down at the gates, across the moats, underneath the outer walls, of those triple terraced embankments, from the housed-over plain at the bottom, to the terraced enclosures above, an ardent, anxious, confident man rapped impatiently, hotly, daringly for admission. "Who comes there?" rang out huskily, at the tunnelled-out entrance. Ieyasu paused; the defiance seemed as if from below. No such sound had disturbed his fancied right since the days when a worthier blade dared invoke the blessings of denial, and the dull grindings of an indiscernable machine, the tireless demands of an unfaltering conventionality, startled him into questioning verily the survival of anything. "There must be some mistake," ventured he, coldly pondering the consequence of his arrest. "No; there is none," answered the keeper, in order; "travellers should make sure that they are prepared, before seeking entrance to a strange place; the princess, Yodogima, resides within, and as observed you have come a long way, with a large retinue, and must be desirous of some rest and recreation. Pray you, keep without, till quite ready; the princess just now implores: I command it." "But I am not a stranger here: the princess wills me enter." "Just so. Therefore look you well that deed and will carry corresponding virtues, before the one lower in consequence invokes another higher in authority. Come, prepare yourself; it has been done, before." "Ieyasu waits on none; I have the means at hand to enforce my way." "So you have, but consider first the defence; no man passes here except at his peril." Ieyasu withdrew, and Kyogoku reported the circumstance to his superior, Kitagira; who had dispatched him for his audacity had not Jokoin appeared to prevent it; Ieyasu had sent her in to inquire the reason of his refusal; she, counseling Yodogima, sought to fasten the blame upon Kitagira; thus saving her own husband, for purposes of her own, at the expense of Kitagira, an innocent man; whom Ieyasu forthwith insisted should be dismissed and banished, before himself consenting to an audience with Yodogima; having sooner effected his own entrance past Kyogoku in the disguise of a woman's palanquin. "Ieyasu refuses to see me, except the child's guardian be dismissed?" repeated Yodogima, thoughtfully. "That is the advice," replied Harunaga, who had interceded to save Kitagira. "Then let Kitagira produce Ieyasu; here, in audience; he has the force with which to do it: if he have not the courage, why, then, Ieyasu may dismiss him; I have, as it is, really no occasion for doing so--but, I want to see Ieyasu." Kitagira vacillated; he believed Harunaga's growing influence over Hideyori and estimate by the mother unwarranted, and would have married Yodogima to Ieyasu at once had he not discerned in that the ultimate defeat of Hideyoshi, the deceased taiko's succession. Said he, to Hayami Morihisa, a captain of the Ozaka guard: