Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/87

Rh last it culminated in a fight which the graybeard, who did nothing but stalk round with a fine woodeny walk, invariably won. This was due quite simply to his god-like greatness, and not to the fact that his adversary went through the fight with his scabbard in lieu of his sword, having with elaborate inadvertence drawn the one for the other, a mistake at which he was subsequently proportionately surprised. All this, of course, detracted not a whit from the sanctity of the performance, which, like that of oratorios, came in with the historical characters the performers were supposed to represent.

In the mean time the countryside had been silently gathering. The ubiquitous little girl with the pick-a-back baby appeared first. Her familiars followed; the waifs growing in stature as they grew in numbers. I did not see them come; I only saw them there. And they made as modest a setting to the miracle as do the mountings to a Japanese painting. There was about them, indeed, a little of the ecstatic stupor of the cow, but the usual bovine stare of modern Japanese curiosity was here tempered by instinctive old-fashioned politeness.