Little birds twittered in the tree-tops, the frosts of winter threatened coming on, the shadows of evening were lengthening and casting their grim visages toward the treasured homestead she had left-- Two chairs, one bearing the three asarum leaves, the other an under man's crest, came tottering up the long, crooked, narrow, and overshaded alley-way, the first ahead and the other after, their heads bobbing and poles creaking, to the patter of hurrying feet and bating of heated breaths. Harunaga, springing to his feet, edged closer to the wall, and peering hard through its miserly cracks muttered: "It is well," and the two passed on, to their vainly induced, if death averting, task. Dismounting and dismissing the carriers, the two entered, at one side the larger passage, through a small, low gate in the massive unscalable stone fence surrounding the house; leaving and abandoning thus any means of defence or escape, for the gate once closed could not be again opened without assistance. Ieyasu apparently bore no weapon at all, and Honda carried only the customary appendages allowable to a gentleman of his worth and rank. Harunaga, it would seem, had adjudged rightly, for he gave the matter no further concern. Kyogoku met them at the inner entrance, in response to Ieyasu's loud knocking upon the door-case. "Welcome, my lord," vouched the former; whereat the latter responded: "Thank you, but not as lord; I seek, am harmless, hence lordless. I trust I find myself still bidden and the princess in good parts. May I enter?" The leaves upon the trees, standing here and there like sentinels, rustled gently in the day's abiding round, yet there arose out of its vigor as it were the meaning of a rebirth, the resurrection of man, the inspiration of soul--an ever-present God, whom the grind of time or the compensations of living alone reveal. Conjure that God as we may, borrow if we can, proclaim Him from the house tops though we do, worship whom we will, there is no salvation till the eye has responded to conscience; and going there, as he did, had Ieyasu but answered to the call that emanated betwixt duty and neglect? Had Yodogima found a haven that is neither of the real nor of the ideal? Had the circle that encompasses encountered its magnet? The broad vistas opening to the eastward carried their gaze back over the same fields they had but trodden: a Star illuminated the universe, and their hearts throbbed with the freshness of a regenerated past. No earthly thing could have parted them: might a heavenly grace have cemented more deeply the affection they two had wrought in the fiery cauldron of human endeavor? Ieyasu bowed low in her presence, and she responded as no other living thing responds--the light of intelligence made certain the order intended.