The new-comer dashed past without deigning notice, nor drew rein till he reached the entrance of the villa. The heavy foliage of the surrounding pines was bowed down with a glittering burden; the picturesque lake, with its rocks and tiny islets, was frozen over, and on its surface wandered painfully and slow the myriad of black tortoises that usually slept beneath. A haven of peace and rest, an oasis of silence in a sea of turmoil. Even the sentries, who slowly marched before the doors, seemed under the spell of winter, their senses blunted by the nipping air.
The whirling mind of Nara was too much engrossed to heed such trivial matters. Flinging his bridle to a sentinel, he inquired where was his master. The man pointed upward with his lance, but added in troubled accents, that my lord was sick,--had given special orders that he was on no account to be disturbed.
"I have come to cure his sickness," the old man said, with a grim smile of peculiar meaning. "I have brought him medicine. See that we are left alone."
The Golden House, as we saw when we were here some time since, is a dwelling of small proportions on the lake bank, built of wood, with a huge towering roof bedizened with much gold. The upper chambers are reached by a ladder-stair of extreme exiguity, so frail and narrow that one person only can mount at a time, and only then by bowing his head.
Nara's tall and bulky form had much ado to reach the landing; but, arrived there, he loosed his katana in its sheath, and, with a strength, for which none would have credited him, seized the ladder, and, wrenching it from its iron fastening, hurled it clattering down.
The paper windows were closed; the light was dim; a voice, tuned low by world-worn weariness, demanded who was there.
Nara strode into the inner room where, wrapped in quilts, the Hojo lay, a hibachi close at hand, his swords in their rack beside him.
"You!" he said, rising to a sitting posture.
"I," was the rejoinder. "I, murderer! The father of O'Tei, the wife whom you have slaughtered."
No-Kami looked dreamily at the figure that stood over him, then felt his garb with a vague, uncertain movement of twitching fingers.