CHAPTER VII


The low, deep music of a temple bell rolled down the hillside and
echoed through the giant cryptomerias. It stirred to action the
creatures of the early dawn and passed out with infinite sweetness to
the red-rimmed east of another day.

The priests in the old temples chanted their prayers with weird
monotony, while a single bird poured out his morning song of love at
the door of his mate.

The old stone steps leading from temple to temple would have looked as
they had a thousand other mornings, gray, grim, and mossy, save for a
little figure that slowly took its way up a long and crooked flight.

Yuki San was on her way to make good her promise to the gods. Her
wooden shoes clicked sharply in the quiet morning air, then hushed as
she paused for rest on a broad step. Even the exertion of the long
climb had failed to color her white cheeks, but her lips were carmine
and her eyes luminous with purpose.

The one spot of color about her otherwise sober little figure was a
bright-red _furoshike_ held close, in which something was carefully
wrapped.

A noisy waterfall leaped past her down the hillside in a perpetual
challenge to race to the foot. Stern-faced images, grim of aspect,
stared at her as she climbed, but Yuki San kept gravely on her way