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TWO BABY BOYS. 61
fresh ball of shreds " ;
but I have heard that they
have noses as big as a wallet, and their hair is as red
as vermilion."
" "
Ah !
laughed the master.
you heard ? "
"Why," said Uh^i, knocking
" And what else have
out the
fireball from
his pipe into his wooden button-cup, " that they swill
liquor out of a dipper, eat toads, and swallow worms,
and dress in the most outlandish fashion."
" So ! And what have you heard about their
religion ? "
"That they are all Kirishtans (Christians), and
worship Yasu (Jesus), the barbarian criminal god.
Is it not so?"
The master smiled, and trudged on. They were
passing through beautiful scenery. The summer's
rice had just been reaped, and the water-covered
fields, dotted all over with tufts of stubble, lay like
mottled mirrors. Here and there the snowy heron,
poised on one leg, dreaming, whitened the landscape,
like a tiny cloud suspended in the air. Occasionally
a flock of cranes, almost large enough to
take the place of the storks (which are rarely seen
in Japan), wheeled across the valley. Monkeys
chattered in the branches of the trees, and now and
then the grunting of wild hogs
told that these animals
were plentiful.
" Good game here in winter, I should think, Une"!."
" Hai, danna (master) ;
I 'm told that one hunter
speared over a hundred wild hogs last winter, and
killed many deer."