sure it was no illusion. Then the Nikko group began to show on the
right, and the Haruna mass took form in front; and as they rose
higher and the sunbeams slanted more, gilding the motes in the heavy
afternoon air, they rimmed the plain in front into one great bowl
of fairy eau de vie de Dantzic. Slowly above them the sun dipped to
his setting, straight ahead, burnishing our path as we pursued in
two long lines of flashing rail into the west-northwest. Lower he
sank, luring us on, and lower yet, and then suddenly disappeared
beyond the barrier of peaks.

The train drew up, panting. It was Takasaki, now steeped in saffron
afterglow. The guards passed along, calling out the name and
unfastening the doors. Everybody got out and shuffled off on their
clogs. The baskets, Yejiro, and I followed, after a little, through
the gloaming.

It was not far to the inn. It was just far enough, at that hour, to
put us in heart for a housing. Indeed, twilight is the time of
times to arrive anywhere. Any spot, be it ever so homely, seems
homelike then. The dusk has snatched from you the silent
companionship of nature, to leave you poignantly alone. It is the
hour when a man draws closer to the one he loves, and the hour when
most he shrinks from himself, though he want another near. It is
then the rays of the house lights wander abroad and appear to beckon
the houseless in; and that must be, in truth, a sorry hostelry to
seem such to him.

Even Takasaki bore a look of welcome alike to the foreign and the
native stranger, which was certainly wonderful for Takasaki. The
place used not to fancy foreigners, and its inns bandied the European