The Tojin-san slightly smiled.
“Come now, surely you don’t anticipate so hard a task?”
“We cannot tell. Even the guard may prove insufficient, but with Shaka’s aid we may succeed!”
A look of alarm came to the Tojin-san’s face.
“I wish no harm whatever to befall her. If you can surprise her upon one of her nightly peregrinations in our neighborhood, and induce her gently but firmly to accompany you, it will be gratifying. Once brought face to face with other people—for I am convinced she is the same as we are—I hope to be able to lay this bugaboo of a fox-woman.”
“As for that, impossible to say,” said Higo vaguely. “Now sinking, now floating, thus is life says the poet. If disaster befall us in the undertaking it will be as decreed of the gods. All things are beforehand ordained.”
“You anticipate hazard in the adventure?”
“We would not attempt it otherwise,” proudly asserted Nunuki, his hand unconsciously caressing his sword-hilt, for these boy-samourai all wore the sword. Higo indeed was of a princely house, and kin to Echizen himself.
As the American looked at them, nerving themselves thus bravely for an encounter which to them at least was a deadly one, he suddenly thought of that frail, fleeing shadow which had gone before him in the gloom of the unlighted halls, and, unconsciously, he smiled. Why, boys as they were, any one of them could surely have crushed her between the palms of his sinewy young hands. If there were a real risk to run, he knew he would be the first to thrust himself in their way. But no! The undertaking was worth while, necessary, indeed, if only for the purpose of demonstrating the foolishness and cruelty of superstition. Even the melancholy tones of his favorite pupil, chanting almost monotonously the Buddhist text:
“Brief is the time of pleasure, and quickly turns to pain, and whatsoever is born must necessarily die,” failed to move him.