The one for which mine host of Takasaki had, with his blessing,
made me a note turned out so poorly prefaced that I hesitated.
The extreme zeal on the part of its proprietor to book me made me still
more doubtful. So, sending Yejiro off to scout, I walked to and fro,
waiting. I did not dare sit down on the sill of any of the booths,
for fear of committing myself.

While he was still away searching vainly for the proper inn, the
lights were suddenly all put out. At the same fatal moment the
jinrikisha, of which a minute before there had seemed to be plenty,
all mysteriously vanished. By one fell stroke there was no longer
either end in sight nor visible means of reaching it.

"In the street of by and by
Stands the hostelry of never,"

as a rondel of Henley's hath it; but not every one has the chance to
see the Spanish proverb so literally fulfilled. There we were--nowhere.
I think I never suffered a bitterer change of mood in my life.

At last, after some painful groping in the dark, and repeated resolves
to proceed on foot to the town and summon help, I chanced to stumble
upon a stray kuruma, which had incautiously returned, under cover of
the darkness, to the scene of its earlier exploits. I secured it on
the spot, and by it was trundled across a bit of the plain and up the
long hill crowned by the town, to the pleasing jingle of a chime of
rings hung somewhere out of sight beneath the body of the vehicle.
When the trundler asked where to drop me, I gave at a venture the
name that sounded the best, only to be sure of having guessed awry