Maido fell face downward, and Takara bathed her handkerchief in the blood that flowed from the wound at his waist; then wrapping up the stained symbol, hid it in the folds of her obi;[[20]] she had taken the oath that is—until avenged.

Takara stood there as if held by some wild, untrained spirit; she stared this way and that, then a low cry escaped her lips. The haunted woods around mocked her, and trembling she listened. Not until now had she realised the awful situation or divined the peril of her strange adventure. She turned to go, but a rough officer seized and quickly led her away.

Upon learning of the wholesale arrests, as they were being made, Takara had missed from its place of keeping the document which Maido had intrusted to her care. She recalled Daikomitsu’s nervousness at the time of her reading it, his chance of seeing her hide it away, and his sudden departure from the garden, and thought of his strange actions afterwards; then she concluded—not reasoned—that these peculiar circumstances bore some connection with the unexpected seizure of so many of the daimyos who were present at the meeting. No one knew Daikomitsu better than Takara, and while she believed him a coward of little consequence she considered him capable of the meanest villainy—in the prospect of gain without detection. She did not stop to inquire about a motive, though she might have discovered one lurking between his repeated trips to Tokyo and the few unguarded disclosures made to her in the course of their long acquaintance.

Divining the clue to Ikamon’s source of information the mikado’s daughter had set out post-haste to frustrate his designs. She first called upon Kido, but he proved to be powerless, in fact was only too glad to have escaped. Then she went to Kanazawa, and there was horrified to learn that her beloved father-in-law too had been snatched away. She did not stop to right herself with Shibusawa, who now charged her with being the accomplice of Daikomitsu—the one person more than any other interested in the downfall of the house of Maido—and when he finally dismissed her, saying:

“There is now nothing to merit even our friendship,” she stooped with sorrow and answered:

“It is true. I am justly served.”

Though their meeting had been a pitiful one, Takara did not break down under the weight of his accusation nor did she weaken in her purpose. She had discovered still greater reason for her activities, and incidentally learned that Shibusawa was fully prepared to withstand any further assault upon his stronghold. She, therefore, left him and resumed her journeying toward Tokyo.

At her arrival there the whole populace seemed in an uproar, the excited mobs everywhere crying:

“To the swamp! to the wilderness! The yamabushi![[21]] the vile! the disloyal! Asano! Kurano! Maido! Let their bodies be ripped!”

Takara shuddered when she heard the fierce rabble, and her heart poured out its measure. Divining Maido’s last thought, she hastened forward in the hope of reaching him before too late to deliver the word that would give him peace before death. Leaving her carriers at the wood side, she clambered through the mire and under the big trees. Time and again the weird, painful sound grated upon her ears as one after another of the victims said his last: