“So now is the time when your father is finishing one of his wonderful swords? I ought to have known it. They found two corpses fearfully hacked to pieces on the lot opposite to you. Strange,—is it not?—but at such times corpses are always found over there. Strange, is it not, Miss O Tetsu?”
“There is nothing strange about it,” the old servant here quickly spoke up. “When Muramasa is engaged on one of his swords, he is utterly absorbed in his work, and robbers and thieves know they need not fear his interference; so they pursue their evil ways without danger of being disturbed by one who would be a match for a dozen of them.”
“I suppose that may be it,” was the response, slowly given. “We think, however, at such a time the smithy could show many strange and queer, perhaps some fearful, scenes, and I would give anything to be able to get a glance at it to-day.”
“I will afford you that pleasure,” said a deep, harsh voice; and turning round, the woman who had spoken saw the smith himself at her elbow. The sight of him at that moment would have appalled even a strong, stout-hearted man, much more the shrinking creature whom he had just addressed. His mouth was firmly compressed, his face looked unnaturally broad, and its repulsive features new seemed perfectly hideous, with the coal-dust and soot which covered them as well as his whole body. The furrow on his forehead was filled with this floating dust, and glistening with the great drops of sweat that had gathered there, had become a shining jet black. But the worst feature of all were those large, restless, glaring eyes, surrounded as they now were with red, inflamed brows, which spoke of long nights of watching and labor.
“You can go on now, O Tetsu,” he said, addressing his daughter, “while I take charge of these ladies. Go on,” he continued in a more peremptory way, as the other loitered; “I must fulfil the wish of these ladies who have such very kind feelings for you and me;” and taking hold of each by an arm, he led them along, while the girl, unaccustomed to hear severe tones from him, hurried away with her servant.
What the two gossips who were now led away into the smithy heard or saw there, they could or would never give a rational account of. They were both in such a state of abject fear and terror that the smith had to change his hold from their arms to their waists to bring them to his place, which was only a few feet away. They remembered the smithy,—large, dark, and gloomy, all the darker and gloomier for the contrast with the bright air and light outside. They remembered seeing a hot, lurid fire at one end, before which the smith’s son was working half naked with an immense hammer on a white-hot bar of iron. All around him were numberless tools and instruments with sharp edges and bright surfaces glistening in the glare of the flame, which came out with a hissing noise. The place also contained a quantity of large and small tubs, some apparently empty, and some containing liquid which looked black as tar, but which, when the firelight fell upon it, shone red as blood. Queer and fantastic shadows, which elongated or contracted as the flame on the hearth shot out or subsided, filled the place. Half-dead with terror, they remembered being led, or rather carried, by the smith close to the fiery heat, and they had a dim recollection of being told by him how a human being could be burned to cinders here in a few moments, and how those cinders could be put to use again in forging a sword. An idle vagrant unwilling to work, or a good-for-nothing, peeping, spying chatterbox, who neglected her home but minded everybody’s business, could hardly be put to any better use than this.
O TETSU AND THE TWO BELDAMES.