After sending her two special charges into the next room, and looking around with suspicious eyes that no eavesdropper was lingering behind, she lowered her voice and half-whispered to her husband:
"When you came in you looked so harassed and troubled, but since you have seen that boy, your demeanour has suddenly undergone a complete change. What can be the reason for this? Something unexpected must have happened! Won't you let me share the secret?"
"It is quite natural that I should have been so perplexed and dumbfounded," answered Takebe. "To deceive me they pretended to be giving a feast, and invited me to the residence of the village mayor, but when I arrived I soon found the feast was all a myth, and the house was in the occupation of Shundo Gemba, vassal of Tokihira, and another man, Matsuo by name, who is under great obligations of gratitude to the ex-Prime Minister, but who has deserted the house of Sugawara, and now shamefully serves the enemy, Tokihira. It seems as though he must have been appointed to examine the head of our young lord, for it has leaked out that he is here under our guardianship, and Tokihira has ordered him to be beheaded. These two men, with some hundred followers, surrounded me in a hostile manner, with this threat:
"We have received information that you are secreting the only son of the ex-Prime Minister in your house, disguised as your own child. Unless you kill him at once and bring his head to us, we will attack you and slay him ourselves.
"As no alternative was left me, I was compelled to pretend to assent to their proposal. I thought that amongst our pupils surely there would be one sufficiently like to be sacrificed in his stead, but when I came home and was confronted by all that row of plebian faces, it was an obvious fact that not a single one would answer the purpose. All those young boors are of a common and vulgar type, and as unlike as possible to the aristocratic face and noble bearing of our palace-reared boy. Despair seized me, but--when I saw the new pupil--it seemed as if he had been specially sent by Providence as a substitute. The difference between them is not so great as that between a crow and a white heron. If I can deceive them but for a short time with that boy's head, I intend to escape to Kawachi with the young prince."