“That’s you.”
“More like some bogle from the wood that’s maybe after us now. I am not a supersteetious man—na, na! ye may laugh or not—but would y’ like to know what in my humble opeenion you are cartin’ on your shoulders?”
“Yes?”
“Some bairn that has been lost and dead these years, and has been whustled up by that blind deevil with the pipe. What did she mean by that reeference to the snaw—answer me that!”
“When I can get into the mind of a Japanese child, and see the world as it sees it, I’ll answer you; you know what children’s minds are, how they mix and imagine things.”
“What did she mean by that reeference to the snaw?” grimly went on M’Gourley. “Mix or no mix, what did she mean by the other bairn being lost in the snaw?”
“Well,” said Leslie, “I don’t care a button whether she’s a bogle or not. If she is, she’s the prettiest bogle that was ever bogled, and about the heaviest, I should think. Here, you take a turn with her, I’m about done.”
They took it turn about, M’Gourley vastly loth, to carry the Lost One; and the Lost One stopped them to gather flowers for her by the wayside, to give her drinks from rivulets, to help her admire and wonder at herons and other marvels of the way, so that it was after six of the clock when two of the most dusty and perspiring Scotchmen in the Eastern Hemisphere entered the happy village of Nikko from the mountain side, Campanula this time on Leslie’s shoulder, grave, triumphant, and holding a huge lily in her hand.
Nikko and its surroundings just now was ablaze with scarlet japonica. The lamps of the camellias were lit, the soaring wistaria vines had broken into clusters of pale lilac blossoms, the iris beautified the field, and the wild cherry the thicket. It was as if spring had called from the tomb of Iyeyasu and her faithful had come to pray.
There are two hotels at Nikko known to the globe-trotter, “Kanayas” and the “New Nikko,” but M’Gourley knew a better place than these.