Part 4

“Who are you?” she said at last. “What is your honorable name, and where do you live?”

“I am Kamura Junzo,” said the boy, “and I live over yonder.” He waved his hand toward the wall.

“On the other side?” inquired Sado-ko in an awed voice. He nodded.

“I know who you are,” he continued.

“I am the Princess Sado-ko,” said the child, gravely.

“Yes,” said the boy, “and the august Sun was your ancestor. You live shut up in this place all alone, and no one plays with you.”

“I have my honorable dear birds and butterflies,” she said.

He looked at her curiously.

“Yes, I have heard you singing to them.”

“And you wished also to see me?” she questioned.

“Yes.” He flushed boyishly, and then added with Spartan honesty, “Also I wanted some of your cherries.”

“They are very good,” said the princess.

“Oh, yes, there are none so good without.”

“Did the guards deign to let you pass through the gates?”

“No.” A pause, then: “I deigned to climb over the wall.”

“Some day,” said Sado-ko, wistfully, “her Majesty says a prince will fly over the walls and carry me away. Perhaps you are that prince.”

“Oh, no; I am not a prince, but if you wish, I will play that I am one.”

“How is that?” she asked, bewildered.

“This cherry tree will be your august castle. I will come over the wall, and you must run around the castle to escape me. I will pursue you, and then I will carry you off from this dark and lonesome prison over the walls to the beautiful world outside.”

“But it is not a lonesome prison here,” said the princess, “and outside it is very cold and miserable, for her Majesty has told me so.”

“Oh, well, let us play it is so.”

And so they played together until past noon, when the maid and gardener were both sent to seek the Princess Sado-ko, who was chasing butterflies. They rescued her just as the “prince” was about to carry her over the walls, upon the top of which he had placed her, by climbing up in the cherry tree and across a bough which sloped to the wall.

The rescued princess stamped her foot angrily at the gardener when he threatened the boy, who laughed jeeringly from the top of the wall; and she scolded the maid when that menial drew her by the hand from the scene. She would not leave the vicinity of the wall until the boy had disappeared completely, which he did by jumping off to the other side. Then she burst into tears for fear he had come to harm in the wicked world without.

Thereafter a close watch was kept upon her movements, and she was not permitted to go near that portion of the walls where stood the cherry-tree castle. Often she heard the boy whistling from that direction, and once she awoke in the night, because she had dreamed that he was calling her name, “Sado-ko! Sado-ko!” After that life was a little more lonesome for the Child of the Sun.

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CHAPTER II

AN EMPEROR’S PROMISE

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