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better results from women already promised to some particular person in marriage. Surely they, at least, might resist, if only a little. Accordingly he obliged a selection of the girls in his household who were shortly to be married to attend upon him. But these too proved a disappointment. They held the will of their lord to be absolute, and they offered their services to Lord Tadanao in untroubled serenity, as to someone quite distinct from the human male.

From about this time, criticism of Lord Tadanao’s unseemly conduct began to be voiced even among the lord’s own retainers.

But Lord Tadanao’s disorder had not yet run its course. The experiments with girls promised in marriage having brought no relief he proceeded to an even more shocking defiance of morality. He ascertained, by private enquiries, which of the wives of his retainers on the Echizen fief possessed the greatest beauty and most lovable dispositions; he summoned three of these ladies, as if on urgent business, to the castle; and he refused to return them to their husbands.

To many this action seemed the final, incontrovertible proof that his lordship was truly mad.

The husbands made repeated entreaties to Lord Tadanao but their wives were not returned to them. The senior councillors strongly urged their lord to reconsider an action so manifestly inhuman; but the more loudly they remonstrated the more pleasure Lord Tadanao derived from persevering in his project.

The three retainers whose wives had been stolen soon discovered the true nature of the cruel deceit practised upon them by Lord Tadanao. Two of them, apparently believing that even this sort of thing did not absolve them from their samurai duty of obedience, thereupon committed suicide.

When notification of their deaths arrived, forwarded from the district inspectors, Lord Tadanao drained the cup of wine he was holding at one gulp, smiled wearily, and said nothing. The members of his household, however, were loud in their