preserved carefully in a fire-proof store-house attached to the
temple, and exhibited yearly to admiring crowds, who behold them
probably with little less veneration than is accorded to the relics of
Aix-la-Chapelle or Trèves; and once in sixty years the monks of
Sengakuji reap quite a harvest for the good of their temple by holding
a commemorative fair or festival, to which the people flock during
nearly two months.

A silver key once admitted me to a private inspection of the relics.
We were ushered, my friend and myself, into a back apartment of the
spacious temple, overlooking one of those marvellous miniature
gardens, cunningly adorned with rockeries and dwarf trees, in which
the Japanese delight. One by one, carefully labelled and indexed boxes
containing the precious articles were brought out and opened by the
chief priest. Such a curious medley of old rags and scraps of metal
and wood! Home-made chain armour, composed of wads of leather secured
together by pieces of iron, bear witness to the secrecy with which the
Rônins made ready for the fight. To have bought armour would have
attracted attention, so they made it with their own hands. Old
moth-eaten surcoats, bits of helmets, three flutes, a writing-box that
must have been any age at the time of the tragedy, and is now tumbling
to pieces; tattered trousers of what once was rich silk brocade, now
all unravelled and befringed; scraps of leather, part of an old
gauntlet, crests and badges, bits of sword handles, spear-heads and
dirks, the latter all red with rust, but with certain patches more
deeply stained as if the fatal clots of blood were never to be blotted
out: all these were reverently shown to us. Among the confusion and
litter were a number of documents, Yellow with age and much worn at
the folds. One was a plan of Kôtsuké no Suké's house, which one of
the Rônins obtained by marrying the daughter of the builder who