A Chinese doctor, brought by the students Junzo and Higo, examined him at a safe distance, and he said the foreign sensei was afflicted with a malady of the brain.
Outside in the summer gardens, serious-eyed, grave-faced boys looked at each other with startled glances, and in the city people were telling in the streets of the dreadful punishments certain to be meted out to those who had molested the guest of their absent Prince; for word had, at last, come from Tokio that he had started on his way back to Fukui.
The day with its sun and fragrance passed away unseen to the great, blank-minded Tojin. But when the night came, with a whispering breeze about the ancient Matsuhaira, he raised a listening head.
As on that first night in Fukui, plainly, distinctly he heard the fluttering, human knocking upon his shoji. Holding his breath, treading on tiptoe, he found his way to the doors, drew them apart and looked out into the dusky woods beyond. How his ears tingled now, straining for that old caressing call:
“T-o-o—jin-san! Too-jin-san!”
Gently, softly, wooingly, he answered the fox-woman, breathing her name into the still air about him:
“Tama! Tama!”
And, as on that other night, again he dropped down into the garden. Over the green-clipped lawn he went, across the wing of the moat, into the bamboo grove, and on and on into the beckoning, luring woods of Atago Yama.