"Perhaps, perhaps," rejoined the refugees. "But they will look after themselves first and who knows how long they will remain to protect us. Tonight is unimportant: it is only the beginning. We shall be left behind. What will be our lot then?"
A murmur of commiseration greeted this.
"I am not afraid," protested the boy defiantly. "I have eaten foreign rice and I shall remain. It will not be as you think. There will be new things—many foreign soldiers will come."
He asked a question of the gatekeeper.
"I go to the city wall too," he exclaimed, "to see what there is to see."
And now he started off at a run.
"There goes one who thinks that the foreigner can accomplish all things," grumbled the gatekeeper. "There is not a thing they do that he does not think excellent and yet he has been here but a very short while. Less than two years ago at the time of the winter festival he came seeking work; and when our master gave it to him he became for him as his father."
But the object of these remarks was far away. Like a dog following up some scent, and wholly absorbed, in what he was doing, the boy had run on.
The nearer he came to the city wall the brighter was the glare. It was indeed so bright that it was now possible to see every object around him. People were peering out of doorways and called to him repeatedly for information, but he ran on.
Up the broad ramp of the city wall he ran and then in the direction of the great tower which crowned the central entrance. He knew that there was where the foreigners would go because there it was possible to see most. Now as he came nearer to this point, the magnificence of the spectacle greatly impressed him.