they were about to trample upon him they vanished from his sight again as quickly as they had appeared. If it had not been a vision, he would have raised his voice in a mad cheer so as to forget his intense loneliness for one short minute. As he was thinking this, the troop of cavalry completely disappeared.
Then tears began to roll down his cheeks. He began to think over the shameful way in which he had lived, and as he raised his wet eyes to the sky, he felt a desire to fall at the feet of everyone whom he had harmed, and to ask for their forgiveness.
“If I am ever rescued, I will compensate for my ugly past by living a better life!” As these words were wrung from his heart, he again sobbed bitterly. The endless blue sky only stared cruelly down upon him, and foot by foot, and inch by inch it seemed to be dropping upon him and pressing heavily upon his breast. No more visions passed before him now. He sighed again, his lips suddenly quivered, and gradually his eyes closed.
Part III
It was an early Spring morning in the following year after the Sino-Japanese war. In a room of the Japanese Embassy in Peking a Japanese military attache, Major Kimura by name, was chatting over coffee and cigars with a certain Mr. Yamakawa, a Bachelor of Science, and a civil engineer of the Japanese Agricultural Department, who had just been sent to China on some official business. These two men were talking in a
