Adventure Magazine Cover — page 152: what you’re looking at

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

146 in English also, and, very naturally, patted his hands together, thumb against thumb. The girl dropped to the floor and beat her head against it. Clark jumped up, and clumsily drew Yoshi-Ko to her feet. “Tell me your trouble,” he said in Japanese. ‘“This is the house of the gods—” so it was more readily understood—“‘and I am their servant. You are safe here, child.”’ To himself he added, ‘‘Why couldn’t this happen on a cool night?” “Tt is a word from the gods?”’ she panted. “That Iam safe?”’ “T promise,’ Clark said gently. She was not satisfied with this. “Your promise for your gods as well? For the Carpenter-God?”’ she insisted with downcast eyes. ‘““Aye, as well as I may,” Clark said soberly in English, and translated it for her still more slowly. _Yoshi-Ko nodded her head in her hands, and let this sink in, then stumbled into the story. She came to the august Kagamo’s part, which she told as truly as if she had been a witness to the transaction. “This is terrible indeed!’’ Clark cried, thinking both of that and of the ensuing complications as well. She continued the drab little tale to the end. ‘‘And here I am,” she ended, as if that settled everything. “But you may not remain here!’ the missionary blurted. ~ “But—you have promised.”’ Clark plunged into the icy pool of ex- planation, and splashed there at large. ‘I mean, I mean—he waved his hands in the air for greater emphasis—“‘it is very difficult to explain. I will find a suitable place for you to live, where you will be safe. But you can not stay here now.”’ His voice dropped. “Tt is very difficult to explain,” he con- cluded lamely. It was, even to himself. The girl had been bought, and worse, paid for; she was the property of the temple. It was folly to think of smuggling her out of Hishiura and back to the farm. She met him with childish insistence. “Vou have promised for your god as well as for yourself,’ she reminded him meekly. ‘So I did,’ Clark whispered, and with that forgot all objection. Adventure “You will not let them take me?” she asked again. Clark bit his lip. ‘There are not enough priests in the temple to do that,”’ he said, and meant it. And_so Yoshi-Ko slept for the first time in her. eighteen years in a bed, with the cook’s wife on the floor beside her. The girl whispered the incantation the woman taught her, and was more soothed by that than by the woman’s grim: ‘‘Aei! I know the story, having listened, little bird. Let me tell you this. C’ark- san is a man of his word, and I heard him promise. He is a man of great strength, and his god is not only a god, but a king as well, in his home across the sea.”’ Yoshi-Ko preferred trusting the new prayer and the strange deity to the paunched missionary, and, mumbling it over and over, was soon asleep. And so Gilbert Clark had a jewel of price and already paid for, an adornment for any place save that in which she was; not until the first sea wind touched Hishiura and swept apart the ricefield haze did Clark doze, and that in his chair. He awoke again and again. "«T will have the abbot down on me in the morning,” he thought, “‘and what shall I tell him? Yomei—”’ the cook’s wife—‘‘will never hold her tongue, even if no one saw the girl enter. She thinks I’m superior to Kagamo, but I wish I had her assurance. What will I say? I am fairly caught, but possibly for the sake of our friendship he will be willing to allow this girl to leave Hishiura. I certainly hopeso. If he does not—” and Clark did not believe he would—‘‘what shall I do then?” The longer he thought the further he was from decision. ‘The dead morning hour was chill in the room, colder because of the heat behind it and that already pressing close; here and there braziers blazed with charcoal for the morning meal before Clark who slept heavily, yet with one hand clench- ing and unclenching about the arm of his chair. HE would have slept none at all had he an ear against the paper féa panel of the temple’s eating-room. The news had come with the first devotee, and Kagamo, sensing trouble uncannily, had entered the priests’ quarters, and now cooly surveyed the scene before him. oO COmiclboook C©