A loud knock came to the wooden entrance gate near the kitchen. Kano heard a man's deep tones, Mata's thin voice answering an enquiry, and then the soft murmur of Umè's words. An instant later, heavy footsteps, belonging evidently to a wearer of foreign shoes, came around by the side of the house toward the garden. Kano looked up, frowning with annoyance. A fine-looking man of middle age appeared. Kano's irritation vanished.
"Ando Uchida!" he cried aloud, springing to his feet, and hurrying to the edge of the veranda. "Ando Uchida, is it indeed you? How stout and strong and prosperous you seem! Welcome!"
"A little too stout for warm weather," laughed Ando, as laboriously he removed his foreign shoes and accepted his host's assistance up the one stone step to the veranda.
"Welcome, Ando Uchida," said Kano again, when they had taken seats. "It is quite five years since my eyes last hung upon your honorable face."
"Is it indeed so long?" said the other. "Time has the wings of a dragon-fly!"
Ando had brought with him a roll, apparently of papers, tied up in yellow cloth. This parcel he put carefully behind him on the matted floor. He then drew from his kimono sleeve a pink-bordered foreign pocket-handkerchief, and began to mop his damp forehead. Kano's politeness could not hide, entirely, a shudder of antipathy. He hurried into new speech. "And where, if it is not rude to ask, has my friend Ando sojourned during the long absence?"
"Chiefly among the mountains of Kiu Shiu," answered the other.
"Kiu Shiu," murmured the artist. "I wandered there in youth and have thought always to return. The rocks and cliffs are of great beauty. I remember well one white, thin waterfall that flung itself out like a laugh, but never reached a thing so dull as earth. Midway it was splintered upon a sunbeam, and changed into rainbows, pearls, and swallows!"
"I know it excellently well," said Uchida. "Indeed I have been zealous to preserve it, chiefly for your sake."
"Preserve it? What can you mean?"