“I pray you to wait a moment, Sir Samurai.  My name is Fuwa Banzayemon at your service.  I am a Ronin, as I judge from your appearance that you are yourself.  I hope you will not think me rude if I venture to ask you to honour me with your friendship, and to come into this tea-house to drink a cup of wine with me and two of my friends.”

The strange Samurai, who was no other than Sanza, looking at the speaker through the interstices of his deep bamboo hat, and recognizing his enemy Banzayemon, gave a start of surprise, and, uncovering his head, said sternly—­

“Have you forgotten my face, Banzayemon?”

For a moment Banzayemon was taken aback, but quickly recovering himself, he replied, “Ah!  Sir Sanza, you may well be angry with me; but since I stole the Muramasa sword and fled to Yedo I have known no peace:  I have been haunted by remorse for my crime.  I shall not resist your vengeance:  do with me as it shall seem best to you; or rather take my life, and let there be an end of this quarrel.”

“Nay,” answered Sanza, “to kill a man who repents him of his sins is a base and ignoble action.  When you stole from me the Muramasa blade which had been confided to my care by my lord, I became a disgraced and ruined man.  Give me back that sword, that I may lay it before my lord, and I will spare your life.  I seek to slay no man needlessly.”

“Sir Sanza, I thank you for your mercy.  At this moment I have not the sword by me, but if you will go into yonder tea-house and wait awhile, I will fetch it and deliver it into your hands.”

Sanza having consented to this, the two men entered the tea-house, where Banzayemon’s two companions were waiting for them.  But Banzayemon, ashamed of his own evil deed, still pretended that Sanza was a stranger, and introduced him as such, saying—­

“Come Sir Samurai, since we have the honour of your company, let me offer you a wine-cup.”

Banzayemon and the two men pressed the wine-cup upon Sanza so often that the fumes gradually got into his head and he fell asleep; the two wardsmen, seeing this, went out for a walk, and Banzayemon, left alone with the sleeping man, began to revolve fresh plots against him in his mind.  On a sudden, a thought struck him.  Noiselessly seizing Sanza’s sword, which he had laid aside on entering the room, he stole softly downstairs with it, and, carrying it into the back yard, pounded and blunted its edge with a stone, and having made it useless as a weapon, he replaced it in its scabbard, and running upstairs again laid it in its place without disturbing Sanza, who, little suspecting treachery, lay sleeping off the effects of the wine.  At last, however, he awoke, and, ashamed at having been overcome by drink, he said to Banzayemon—­

“Come, Banzayemon, we have dallied too long; give me the Muramasa sword, and let me go.”

“Of course,” replied the other, sneeringly, “I am longing to give it back to you; but unfortunately, in my poverty, I have been obliged to pawn it for fifty ounces of silver.  If you have so much money about you, give it to me and I will return the sword to you.”