The roads ran smooth and easy up the long sloping ascent, they were builded and used, for a like purpose, long before Shibata's rise had conjured sublimity's ultimate pass. Presently sounds beyond echoed again the uncertainties of dame progress. The dizzy heights scaled measured accurately the cost of further effort. Ominous clouds darkened the way. Shibata at last lagged, and a fox leaped from the roadside. "Gonroku! Gonroku!" whispered Shibata, springing from his chair and peering into darkness. "Yes, father," replied the son, a little surprised, but not altogether unconvinced. "The enemy! Cannot you see them? They come in columns touching the seas: ranks receding--I cannot number them--reaching beyond the horizon. Katsutoya leads them." "Impossible," shouted Sakuma. "On with the march." "Listen," whispered Shibata, now white in the face and unsteady of foot. "They do mock Sakuma," ventured Gonroku, before the first echo had again resounded upon the still resonant air. "Listen," repeated Shibata, his eyes like fireballs in the dark. "A thousand answers," said Gonroku; now, too, almost convinced. "You see phantoms, and Sakuma hearkens not to goblins. Old women and, I believe, some men still read disaster into the appearance of a fox--dogs, badgers, lizards, etc. If Katsutoya really be at Shizugataka, it is high time that we arrest him. And if Hideyoshi has been so reckless as to risk a host in one defense, so much the better for Shibata; the way shall have been cleared to Kyoto with a single stroke and--if I mistake not, Kyoto without Katsutoya would be quite as acceptable at least to a part of Kitanoshi as it should be with hi--a phantom." "What means Sakuma, father?" inquired the son, perchance more intelligently than judiciously. "Let him take his own proper command, and himself prove that prophecy is not blasphemy--by sending up, to this, a secure place, for you and me, the head of this 'phantom,' as he calls it." "Good," responded Sakuma--and division again strengthened Hideyoshi's position. With calling at Nagahama, Hideyoshi had made easy the plan of turning an enemy's ready contingent into a no less effective than willing instrument. Katsutoya had never loved Yodogima, and out of promotion had conceived the idea also that Shibata, his benefactor's purpose, were a hindrance rather than a help to his vainly imagined restoration. Further, this particular young princess, according to his nicely wrought notions, did not at all augur the fulfillment of an Ashikaga shogun's well-reputed requirements--and Katsutoya's dreams were already resplendent with all that had made his supposed ancestors of some three hundred years tolerable if not respectable.