Page:Four Japanese Tales.pdf/63

 was, silent, peering from under bushy eyebrows straight before him, and finally held his pace, knowing that his objections were useless and his persuasions vain. They walked one beside the other, and the sweet voice of the chirping se mi accompanied them. They passed the group of bushes and trees, before long were plunged in the shade of a wood, and finally caught sight of the tile roof of the temple, peeping out above the bamboo thicket.

»In the course of those years the garden ran wild,« whispered the. »As for me, I am superfluous here. In this jungle I could not find the way.«

The stopped before a spot to which no longer penetrated the rays of the sun, hanging low in the western horizon.

»As for the entrance to the temple yard, I shall find it myself,« he said in an even voice. »Let your honor continue on the way home in peace and quiet. Is it possible to hear the temple bell distinctly in the village?«

Still more quietly the old man responded: »Not only the bell but also the big drum of the main temple can be heard in the village. Only we have not heard either for a long time.«

The ronin smiled:

»Be good enough, you and your people, to listen early in the morning, and if you will hear the sound of the drum, be sure I am well and alive and that your village has been delivered from the Goblin-Spider once and forever.«

The old man took fright at these words uttered in a loud voice, hastened to bow himself away and hobbled at a lively pace out from the immediate nearness of the temple. In a few moments he disappeared in the wood. And the, left alone on the glade divided into dying light and growing shadow, for a long, long time stood motionless, plunged in thought, and then set about searching for the path, overgrown and hidden somewhere in the bamboo thicket.

It was gloaming, and at the slightest movement of a bamboo twig it looked as if a spider were gliding down to the ground. The dusk blended the outlines of things, over which there seemed to slip an insidious cobweb. Immense shadows lay here and there; a boulder beneath a widespread pine might have been a spider’s body, and the bulging roots its phantom legs; in places there were black tarns of darkness.

The, however, did not mind these weird shadows, being engaged in seeking the path by which he could penetrate to the yard