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man’s anger. With a curt exclamation he pushed away the hand that clutched at his overskirts and abruptly walked through to his private apartments.

The old man’s eyes filled with tears. He was mortified that the lord, to whose upbringing since his earliest days he had devoted such loving care, should have thus outrageously insulted him. As he recalled the respect and kindness shown him by Lord Tadanao’s father during his lifetime, he bitterly repented that he had ever lived on to know such shame. The idea of faking defeats on the Gobang board to flatter his lord was a servile notion which would never for one moment have entered Tango’s honest head.

But by this time Lord Tadanao had come to interpret every act and gesture of his retainers in only one light.

That day, on returning to his house, the old man put on formal robes, and, with due observation of ceremony, plunged a dagger into his wrinkled stomach, thus ending an existence which had become too shameful to bear.

Rumours of Lord Tadanao’s disorderly conduct gradually spread throughout and beyond his domains.

Lord Tadanao, avid for victories of any sort, had always been an enthusiastic player of board-games, finding great satisfaction in demonstrating to himself his superior skill, but after this incident he suddenly desisted from such pastimes.

It was natural, under the circumstances, that Lord Tadanao’s mode of life should grow gradually more wild and uncouth. Within the castle he did nothing but eat, drink, and make love. When abroad his sole pastime was hunting. He hunted birds on the moors and beasts in the mountains. Birds and beasts did not—simply because it was the Master of the Province come to hunt them—rush voluntarily within range of Lord Tadanao’s arrows. Away from the world of men, in the world of nature. Lord Tadanao felt refreshed, as if he had escaped from behind that barrier of deceit.