Adventure Magazine Cover — page 150: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MORE THAN een — Author of ‘Mother of Beggars”’ ATER-BUFFALO wallowed in the mud of steaming ricefields; a great pest of shimmering flies spent the days with them and the nights in the crevices of every thatched roof in Hishiura; locusts battered like hail against closed paper panels or, if the houses were opened to the air, dashed against the lamps ultimately to find the chimney and cremate nastily. Greatest of tragedies, the mission cook had announced to Gilbert Clark that white ants had alevoured the bacon, and already borers were to be found in the very bed-posts. One by one the little missionary waved these plagues aside as unimportant; what truly worried him was this: In a moment of affluence (from the lot- tery) and parental duty (from rice wine) the pot-cleaner of the horsemeat shop had sent for Yoshi-Ko, his daughter, who had spent her years on a waterbound farm miles distant, and Yoshi-Ko had come to Hishi- ura. She had gone as one of the ragged urchins that tumbled in the fields; when she returned, eighteen, her father fairly burst with the glory and shone by her reflected light, guessing from her beauty the profit it might be. At last, seeing no marriage for her, being the pot-cleaner’s daughter and that she would have no less, he bade her shortly be sold or be gone. All this on her first day in Hishiura. She felt no obedience toward him, yearned for the farm again, and very naturally went to the temple for advice; when she left, and “The Inn of the Silkworm Moth.” with more than rightful color in her smooth cheeks, the very blind beggar at the temple gate looked at her out of one eye. It had been bad: it was worse now; the young priests went wild, having seen her. The abbot, Kagamo, tired of their mooning before the fourth Evening Prayer. ‘“‘These priests of mine will loll about the garden thinking of everything save devo- tion,” he grunted to himself, and, know- ing his pot-cleaner, went into action immediately. Kagamo appeared in the mud-caked street, wasting no time at all. Would the pot-cleaner accept thirty yen gold as a present? The pot-cleaner would, by the horns of Jizo, and did. “Fellow,” the abbot said, when the last coin had been bitten, “your daughter is too handsome for this street.’ “She is,” the father agreed vociferously. “And how very dear to me you can never imagine.”’ “T can very well,’? Kagamo said shortly. ‘“‘And I remember that you have thirty yen gold in hand.” “‘Hai!” cried the pot-cleaner. have her when you like.”’ He looked up doubtfully. ‘“‘She has not been easy to deal with,” he added slowly, fingering the coins as if they might leave him. ‘Marriage is what she wants.” ‘Understand this,’”’ Kagamo said, frown- “Vou shall 144 ing, ‘‘all will be done with scrupulous care. As for her duty, we will take her before COMNIEOOCKS. COM