A thousand temples commemorated events that would not yield to the onrush of ambition or the more potent realities of an every-day humdrum; bonzes gray and firm chanted music both sacred and dear behind those walls scattered here and there throughout the rugged fastness to and beyond this Nara, the seat of the best that God, in his fairness, had inspired; birds soared statelier here, the odor of flowers smelled more authentic, and the stones stubborn puzzled their reading; no man ventured into these hallowed mysteries without a deeper sense of the responsibilities that fade and shadow as we trudge or falter the stepping liege of escaping time, and out of its depths there arose a force as restraining. Over to the westward, the passions and the penalties crowded hard and fast those of realistic now; not a man of them spared the energy of a thought or wended the loss of a step toward that past and gone, or measured in other than dollars and cents the future and its dependence, as against an always tardy, yet fast-running present; shop or hovel, land and water, man or beast, the cultured and the uncultured, jammed and fretted in one continuous roar commercial. What compensations, for such turmoil! A million souls dwarfed into no higher recompense than thirst to own, hunger to appease, and only death to relieve it all. No glad messages trumpeted their tired and aimless steps, serving or served, the plethoric rich and the indigent poor, the hopeful or the despairing alike groped, ran, or loafed their allotted space in its empty, beggarly passing. Yodogima prayed for these; they lay sadly beyond any more helpful, if grateful, equivalent. But to the front, looking southward, broad vistas of undulated expanse led on, over the rice fields and into areas bordered with the blue of ocean's tireless, unpolluted energies. At her back reared mighty walls and sank deeper the moats--no intruder might strike there; but here, in the foreground, upon unsullied soil, underneath her own surveillance, in the very bosom of their stronghold, the battle must be fought. The hosts were already gathering: Sanada led them; he had tasted of the blood sacrificial; fought his way to Uyeda, in the teeth of Hideyasu's avenging; his father gave him the choice, of following Ieyasu or donning the new: in him, young and active, there had risen fresher desires, fervid, if inconsiderate. "Let us fight," he had said, replying to Jokoin's trumpeting, and in view of these energies had been given command, under Hideyori, the chief, counselled by Harunaga, more matured than either, directed by Yodogima, their princess--trusted, if not worshipped. Were she then, to them, Christian or Pagan, as much as goddess; or should the future, yet, reveal some deeper hidden truth?