On the way it became necessary to pass directly the new castle at Fushima, built for Hidetsugu, and occupied as well, for the present, by Ieyasu as a guest while returning from Nagoya to Yedo. Hideyoshi, though anxious, could not resist the temptation to stop--assigning as an excuse some urgency that he and Ieyasu visit the mikado, since the opportunity presented itself. "But the child? its birth? why not proclaimed?" urged Ieyasu, cautiously. Hideyoshi attempted no immediate answer, but Harunaga did: pulling Ieyasu by the sleeve and suggesting it a good time to make way with the taiko. Now this perfectly feasible undertaking--Hideyoshi was utterly unprepared and without sufficient escort--somehow impressed itself directly upon him, though he had neither seen the act performed nor heard the words spoken by Harunaga; whom he had recognized, no sooner than seen, only a few moments before, and upon inquiry found to be a transient guest of Ieyasu's, traveling in train toward the castle Ozaka. Our taiko marvelled eagerly the circumstance, and bided patiently some opportunity. News of the birth had in fact reached the bonze--in readiness--at Hiyeisan even before Hideyoshi himself had been at all informed. Also the gossip attending the taiko's failure of recognition: stranger yet Oyea's enforced acknowledgment concerning the temple and Yodogima were known to Harunaga in time for him to discard his disguise as Katsutoya, a bonze, and calling to his aid some two hundred horsemen, held in hiding, make his way as far as Fushima before the taiko had arrived. Ieyasu hesitated; true he had not suspicioned Harunaga's motive, nor suspected his knowledge of or interest in Yodogima's affairs, not at all; but his interests dictated, as he believed and Hideyoshi surmised, an altogether less inhuman course. "I am an old man," began Hideyoshi, addressing Ieyasu, openly, and not without some pretty well remembered impressions vividly made by none other than Yodogima's long ago accurately aimed thrusts; "I find my sword heavy; please carry it for me." Ieyasu answered by saying: "I had a dream, last night: I dreamt that Tengu, the hobgoblin, confronted me; and, of enormous proportions, resolved himself into the size of an ant sitting upon my arm: I swallowed him." "Good," replied Hideyoshi; "I see the point; I am rightly rebuked, for going about unattended." "Permit me to propose the good offices of Harunaga, as an escort thence to Ozaka: I need not vouch for him, a gentleman, and the taiko is--" "A father," interposed Hideyoshi, looking Harunaga squarely in the face. The latter winced, but proffered his services, as urged and designed by Ieyasu.