Yet, strange inconsistency! the ronins, still under the direction of Hasuda, went about everywhere, crying: “Down with the foreigners! Long live the Shogun!”
Those foreigners who escaped believed that the Shogun had ordered the night’s horrors.
At the hour of dawn Hasuda wiped his sword on a foreign fabric. As the morning breezes from the bay cooled his tired brow he laughed grimly.
“Ah,” he exclaimed, “what the noble Prince of Mori could not countenance himself has been accomplished; and, being accomplished, I shall find in him no open friend, it is true, but no sworn enemy.”
The roar of guns came faintly to his ears.
“To-morrow—to-morrow!” he mused, with a chuckle. “Nay, to-day, the wrath of the foreigners will descend upon the shogunate—the innocent shogunate. Decidedly, it is droll.”
XXXIII
