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 CHAPTER V

FALLING LEAVES

HE day before Nagaoka’s last “Castle Sinking Celebration,” Kin took me to walk along the edge of the old castle moat. Years before, part of it had been levelled up, and was now occupied by neat little rice farms; but most of it was still only a marshy waste that was gradually being filled with rubbish from the town. In one place an angle of the wall projected out pretty far, forming a protected pond where was clustered a crowded mass of velvety lotus leaves. Kin said that the water of the moat used to be very deep and as clear as a mirror; and that, here and there, were large patches of lotus leaves, which, in the blooming season, looked like unevenly woven brocade with a raised pattern of white-and-pink blossoms.

“What did the castle look like, Kin? I want to hear again,” I said, looking across the dykes to the ruined walls and piles of heaped-up stones on the top of the hill.

“Like all castles, Etsu-bo Sama,” she replied, “except that this was ours.”

It was not often that Kin’s gay spirits were sobered, but she stood gazing gravely across at the ruins, saying nothing more.

I turned my face toward the hill and closed my eyes, trying to see, in my mind, the picture so often painted for me by the loyal lips of Jiya or Ishi. A great square mass of stone and plaster with narrow, white-barred windows and tiers of curving roofs artistically zig-zagging over each 33