Page:Madame Butterfly; Purple eyes; A gentleman of Japan and a lady; Kito; Glory (1904).djvu/191

 him, as they had the emperor's warrant for doing; they permitted him to kill himself, that he might continue to be accredited (as he now was) to the glorious trench at Jokoji, which was to live in history forever. Kito assented, felt the edge of his sword, smiled in a ghastly fashion, and—inquired hesitatingly the whereabouts of his wife and child. He cared nothing for the glory of the trench. The officers drove him away from his own door with fierce gibes and strict injunctions to die at once, or—

From a secluded nook in the hills Kito looked down upon his home for many days. Perhaps he shed a few tears, soldier though he was. And who would not? His rice-fields were dry; his mats, which nothing harsher than his own bared feet had ever touched, were being trodden to shreds by the steel-shod officers; and his tiny garden, with its bamboos, its oranges, its wistaria-covered tea-house, all fashioned by his own hands, was but a pretty booth for sake-drinking.

Yet, could it all have purchased one word of the whereabouts of his wife and child, Kito would have gone away and left it.

Then, one day, as he looked, a sudden