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272
HONDA THE SAMURAI.
some of them to die by being frozen was nothing
uncommon. Most of them had gambled away their
clothing, and a dozen or more were stark naked.
Water was freezing on the ground in the shade, and
as evening was coming on, the shivering wretches
seemed ill-fitted to carry the travelers four n", or ten
miles.
" Feed them before they start, and watch them
while they eat, or they '11 gamble away their rice,
and there will be only hungry men to leave you in
the lurch. Pay for their food yourself, and give
them their wages only at the end of the journey,"
said the relay-agent.
Mr. Rai ordered rice and soup from the res-
taurant, and had these wretched creatures called
" clouds," because they wander about homeless arid
outcasts fed under his eyes. Then cheerily setting
the poles of the palanquins on their shoulders, and
swinging their burden, -they started off, an extra
four men being provided for relay. At every ri, or
league, they stopped, built a fire of leaves, and after
warming hands and legs till they were as well singed
as a chicken under a newspaper blaze in the kitchen,
they jogged on.
Yet even these men touched Mr. Rai's awakened
sensibilities less than the clouds of women, many of
them young and fair, who were doomed to lives in
which moral purity was impossible. As he occasion-
ally passed the dead body of an eta on the road,
or saw the fresh-turned earth which covered the
unmarked corpse of a "cloud," his thoughts were