THE DRAGON PAINTER
eign rose-plant, pink of bloom, in a blue-gray jar, had been pruned and trained into a beauty that no western rose-bush ever knew.
Behind the Kano cottage the rise of ground for twenty yards was of a grade scarcely perceptible to the eye. Here Mata did the family washing; dried daikon in winter, and sweet-potato slices in the summer sun. This small space she considered her special domain, and was at no pains to conceal the fact. Beyond, the hill went upward suddenly with the curve of a cresting wave. Higher it rose and higher, bearing a tangled growth of vines and ferns and bamboo grass; higher and higher, until it broke, in sheer mid-air, with a coarse foam of rock, thick shrubs, and stony ledges. Almost at the zenith of the cottage garden it poised, and a great camphor tree, centuries old, soared out into the blue like a green balloon.
Behind the camphor tree, again, and not visible from the garden below, stood a temple of the "Shingon" sect, the most mystic of
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