Then he went home, and said to his father--

"I went to play by the river to-day, with a friend; and as he was rude
to me, I threw him into the water and killed him."

When his father heard him speak thus, quite calmly, as if nothing had
happened, he was thunderstruck, and said--

"This is indeed a fearful thing. Child as you are, you will have to
pay the penalty of your deed; so to-night you must fly to Yedo in
secret, and take service with some noble Samurai, and perhaps in time
you may become a soldier yourself."

With these words he gave him twenty ounces of silver and a fine sword,
made by the famous swordsmith Rai Kunitoshi, and sent him out of the
province with all dispatch. The following morning the parents of the
murdered child came to claim that Itarô should be given up to their
vengeance; but it was too late, and all they could do was to bury
their child and mourn for his loss.

Itarô made his way to Yedo in hot haste, and there found employment as
a shop-boy; but soon tiring of that sort of life, and burning to
become a soldier, he found means at last to enter the service of a
certain Hatamoto called Sakurai Shôzayémon, and changed his name to
Tsunéhei. Now this Sakurai Shôzayémon had a son, called Shônosuké, a
young man in his seventeenth year, who grew so fond of Tsunéhei that
he took him with him wherever he went, and treated him in all ways as
an equal.

When Shônosuké went to the fencing-school Tsunéhei would accompany