federates. One of these, a physician, was engaged to furnish poison and serve it in the tea. With this intent he secretly put the compound in a kettle of boiling water from which the tea was to be made. The other bravo, a fencer, was to steal in at midnight under the floor,[1] and from this lurking-place to stab Jirōzayémon in case the poison failed to prove effective. Hapless Jirōzayémon! Death indeed stared him in the face!
But the landlord, a worthy old fellow named Tokuyémon, had from the first seen through Takita's dark plot, and made up his mind to save Jirōzayémon's life. By a happy chance he saw the poisoner pour the noxious draught into the kettle. When the villain left the room, he emptied the kettle, filled it with fresh water and put, instead of poison, a "laughing-medicine" into the water.
Jirōzayémon, when he entered the guest-room, sat down face to face with Takita, and the latter ordered his quacksalver to serve his travelling-companion with tea. But the landlord, who kept
- ↑ The thin wooden floor of a Japanese house is usually about three feet above the ground.
