“Not so, Takigawa. Wives pleading, daughters interfering, and everybody for himself, these days—I tell you Hideyoshi is the curse of this land. On with the business, and when Shibata has laid low the last of them, stood right above might and attained his rightful place, then Katsutoya may rule and Yodogima can speak—consolation is a husband’s due, obedience a parent’s command.”

“Honorable father—”

“Tut, tut; Shibata’s child knows not irreverence. See her, my lord? Ha, ha; how gracefully she falls! An angel could not look sweeter, there is no better plaything—let us be off, Takigawa, lest we disturb her and miss the enemy; it is a long way to Shizugataka.”

CHAPTER IV

Presently the hillsides, far out over the noised-up city, rang with the bustle and cry of “To arms”. No patriot there, not a samurai’s mother, but thrilled with the joy and strengthened at the bidding of higher endeavor.

Only the mean, the weak, and the unpatriotic would question expediency; small men with little souls might buy to sell again; others of brawn, their minds a mirage, fashion the wares, drones and idlers drive and shout their wives and children to plant and draw—men and women, humans with a purpose and a promise higher and nobler than grubbing for food or haggling for exchange or bartering for gold served a usefulness, encouraged a hope, and pointed the way toward that rendering which make men large; the ideal portended a reality which bid them not, ever, stoop to sordid, useless gain.

The lines formed, and no more pleasing scene had come down through time or fancy; men with hardened muscle and bronzed arms, their eyes sparkling and step quickened, with spears levelled and cutlasses buckled on, tramped to time and listened with intent.

“Open the gates, and down with the bridge,” shouted the captain, as a hundred thousand brave troops turned their backs upon peace and stores to face the exigencies of uncertain warfare—an underling’s last sad gasp at fate and the godly’s only reach to greatness.