He tottered from the room, and that was the last the lads saw of him. On the following day a messenger brought to them in their office at Yokohama a package of money containing the amount previously paid to Mr. Black.
Before the end of the week he had settled up his affairs and left Japan. It was heard later that he had returned to England, where he went into retirement with the money saved from his business. It is to be hoped he sought repentance for his misdeeds.
In these o'er-true tales it is a pleasure to part with some characters, but painful to bid farewell to others. A writer has his likes and dislikes, even in his own literature. It is said that the immortal Dickens cried when he penned the description of Little Nell's death in the "Old Curiosity Shop," and that his heart stirred with a curious anger as he chronicled the villainies of Bill Sykes in another story.
It is probably for a similar reason that I do not like to write the words that will put an end for all time to Grant and Nattie and Mori. We have spent many pleasant half hours together. It has been a pleasure to depict their honesty, and manliness, and truth, to watch their brave struggle against misfortune, and at last to record their final triumph.
They will succeed in life—integrity and moral worth always do. They secured the famous contract, and made a legitimate profit from it. That was before the recent war between China and Japan. They invested their increased capital, and are now, at the present date, on the fair road to fortune.
Mr. Burr is the manager of their Yokohama house. Mori is in general charge of the business in Japan, and Grant and Nattie are now traveling in the United States visiting their relatives and quietly keeping an eye out for the trade.
Sumo is established in the main office as porter and messenger. He sports a gorgeous uniform and is ever relating to the small boys of the neighborhood his memorable fight with Raiko, the thug, at the foot of old Bandai-San.
And now, in the language of those gentle people, the Japanese, I will say "Sayonara!"
THE END.