3 182202465 1721 s$J%*mf- m^W Jfe*'^^*^ *'* WWW;: -'W - Library

260 HONDA THE SAMUEAL
" This is the site of Taiko Sama's camp, and here
he sat under his war-umbrella when the arrow shot
by Shibata split the pole beside which the Taiko
was sitting. The people point out that stone over
there on the river-bank as the one by which he
stood," said Doctor Sano.
They looked down on the river and city sleeping
in the silvery light of the moon only two days past
its full.
Hurrying on to the shrine, they selected
places of concealment in the scrub-bamboo grass
which grew high and thick around.
It was a lonely-looking place. Within a wooden
fane of Fudo, the god of vengeance, stood the hideous
black-faced, fire-haloed, scowling idol, holding
in his hands a rope to bind evil-doers and a sword
to punish them, his body being set against a background
or garment of flame. In place
of the usual
grated door, the shrine opened outward without protection,
except from the projecting eaves. In front,
but some feet to the side, stood a crooked old pine.
In this tree a multitude of rusty nails had been
driven and down its trunk were ruts and rust marks,
with here and there a fragment of weather-stained
and mildewed straw, while at the bottom was a little
of the same material. Two or three of the lower
branches were encircled with wreaths of fringed
and twisted rice-straw knotted together. These
tokens marked the tree as sacred to the Kami, or
god of the place.
" It is
ugly and bent enough to be a gallows-tree,"
said Mr. Koba, referring to the common superstition