"Oh, he's alright; he didn't know; the new religion takes 'em all. Repent and be saved; quarrel and separate; divorce and--do you know, they allow man, big men, only one wife at a time; firstary, secondary, or multipary? That's something!" "I do believe you are losing your mind, Jokoin." "That's nothing; go to Bungo; they're half daffy there; and, they say, Hideyoshi, himself, would have accepted Christianity were it not for giving up the idea of more wives than one. I guess, though, he's a stickler on that--perhaps, come to think, you may know better than I?" "I know my own mind; and that is more than it would seem--there, Jokoin; it is enough; let us be sisters--I presume there is nothing against that, in your religion?" "Really, I haven't inquired: the priests will know--however, we might just sort of hang out that way; it's an elastic affair, this Christian religion, whatever else." Withal her newfangled notions and queer mannerisms, Yodogima found this little sister most stimulating and satisfying to know and to cling to, however trying or unreasonable. Each, it is true, had an ideal of her own, quite as distinct and appealing to its possessor, as Esyo's had been to her, yet neither one had stooped to attain, nor would she. Jokoin had become a Christian because it pleased her to do so: its revelation had resolved more the humorous than serious, the human and not the divine. A half century of struggle and martyrdom had proven, if anything, in their minds, that the Christian church, like all others, were but a means to an end: that God alone is supreme--substitution or addition or usurpation a dangerous, designed, fleeting makeshift. All these creeds had been threshed out in competition and with vengeance--none had spared life or property--and yet it seemed to Yodogima that she must be saved: saved in accordance with precepts established and of a danger that to her were more than death or salvation, or both, however atoned or attuned. She must live, she must do, and in that attain: in her prayer she asked for power and not for ransom. The whole camp now enlivened with bustle and drive; each of the captains had been assigned his portion or placed most advantageously, in their distributions and allotments, and great preparations were making for the leave-taking--some heart-rending, others in good cheer. Most of Hideyoshi's leaders shared Ieyasu's former possessions, but Gamo Ujisato, one of Jokoin's recently ardent admirers--Takiyama had been sooner banished to Kaga--without leave or let, on her part, was set down at Aizu, in the cold far north. "Never mind, Jokoin," promised Hideyoshi, upon her remonstrance; "you shall have left Ishida, and, perchance, another, or some others, I fear too much a mask for hypocrisy: with them, you should be able to make out, if not capture the empire." "What a bunch!" replied Jokoin, sorely abashed. "Well, then, suppose you include your humble--ahem!"