The burly laugh that followed was suddenly stopped, as the student Higo flung himself defiantly before them all.
“I, Higo, kin of your absent Prince, will answer you. There are nine hundred students, samourai themselves, and sons of a thousand samourai before them. All of these are loyal to our teacher. They will protect and fight for him, if necessary.”
Now the answering voice snarled merely in explanation.
“Who spoke of harm to your sensei? It is not him we seek. We have come for the Fox-Woman of Atago Yama, who blights our fortunes, who brings sickness, poverty, and disaster upon our ancestors and our children, and whose doom has been spoken by Fukui. You have trapped her, young sirs of the college, like any other female beast of the woods. Let older, more experienced hands finish your honorable work. There are those of us whose hands performed a like service upon the debased parents of the gagama, and whose palms itch now to mingle her blood with her sire’s. Let but the Tojin-san eject this siren of the mountains, and we will be satisfied.”
“It cannot be done,” frantically cried the boy Junzo. “I myself have touched the wretched, helpless one, and, as the gods in heaven hear me, she is but—human, as ourselves!”
A roar of derision greeted the boy’s passionate outcry, and there was a concerted movement toward where the Tojin-san stood towering above them, his arms crossed, his keen, stern eyes regarding them piercingly.
Some one pushed forward the interpreter, and the craven, agitated fellow now faced his master. He made several ineffectual efforts to speak, gulped at the lump which rose persistently in his throat. Before him loomed the grim, sardonic face of this west-countryman he had always inwardly feared and respected; behind him the rabble of dissatisfied ronin.
Gasping, trembling, he repeated to the Tojin the verdict of the mob. They called upon him to deliver into their hands the fox-woman. Failing to do that, they would storm the Shiro and take her by force. Whiningly, pleadingly, he begged his master to hurl from his house the wretched spirit he was harboring.
To this demand the Tojin-san returned slowly, as though he carefully chose his words, that if one hair upon the head of the one he protected were touched, the whole Fukui should feel a vengeance such as never had befallen it before. He, the Tojin-san—a citizen of a mightier country than this—was the guest of one of their princes. Not alone his friends at home, but those here—the very Emperor himself, who had pledged himself publicly to uphold the new enlightened laws, borrowed from the West—would avenge insult and wrong done to him—the Tojin.
His answer, translated by Negato, raised a turmoil of angry discussion, and that one who seemed to be the leader of the company, sprang headlong forward, as if to show the way to those who hesitated. He climbed half-way up the steps to where the Tojin stood, and quick as a cat drew forward his swords.