CHAPTER VII
The low, deep music of a temple bell rolled down the hillside and echoed through the giant cryptomerias. It stirred to action the creatures of the early dawn and passed out with infinite sweetness to the red-rimmed east of another day.
The priests in the old temples chanted their prayers with weird monotony, while a single bird poured out his morning song of love at the door of his mate.
The old stone steps leading from temple to temple would have looked as they had a thousand other mornings, gray, grim, and mossy, save for a little figure that slowly took its way up a long and crooked flight.
Yuki San was on her way to make good her promise to the gods. Her wooden shoes clicked sharply in the quiet morning air, then hushed as she paused for rest on a broad step. Even the exertion of the long climb had failed to color her white cheeks, but her lips were carmine and her eyes luminous with purpose.
The one spot of color about her otherwise sober little figure was a bright-red furoshike held close, in which something was carefully wrapped.
A noisy waterfall leaped past her down the hillside in a perpetual challenge to race to the foot. Stern-faced images, grim of aspect, stared at her as she climbed, but Yuki San kept gravely on her way until she reached the open door of the great silent temple.
The faint light of the early morning had scarce penetrated the shadows that clung about the gorgeous hangings and rich symbols of this ancient place of worship. A white-robed priest, oblivious to all save his own meditations, paid little heed to the childlike figure as it knelt before the cold, calm, unchanging image of the great Buddha.