some influential person who would help them to fulfil their mission, the brother and sister encountered only the strangest types of market-women and higglers. Autumn was coming on, they had achieved nothing and there seemed no reason to suppose that the ensuing months would be any more profitable than those which they had just wasted. Ateki who had relied entirely upon her brother and imagined him capable of dealing with any situation that arose, was dismayed to discover that in the City he was like a water-bird on shore. He hung about the house, had no notion how to make enquiries or cultivate fresh acquaintances, and was no better able to look after himself than the youths he had brought with him from Tsukushi. These young fellows, after much grumbling, had indeed mostly either found employment in the neighbourhood or gone back to their native province. It grieved Ateki beyond measure that her brother should be thus stranded in the Capital without occupation or resource, and she bewailed his lot day and night. ‘Come, come, Sister,’ he would say to her, ‘on my account you have no cause to be uneasy. I would gladly come a good deal further than we have travelled and put up with many another month of hardship and waiting, if only I could get our young lady back among the friends who ought to be looking after her. We may have spoilt our own prospects, you and I; but what should we be feeling like to-day, if we consented to let that monster carry her off to his infamous den? But it is my opinion that the Gods alone can help us in our present pass. Not far from here is the great temple of Yawata where the same God is worshipped as in our own Yawata Temples at Hakozaki and Matsura, where mother used to take the young lady to do her penances. Those two temples may be a long way off, but the same God inhabits all three, and I believe that her many visits to Hakozaki and Matsura
