“Do you know, Billie, I think I’ll have to rest a moment before we join the others,” said Mary, leading the way up the hillside and sitting down under a giant pine tree.  “I’m almost paralyzed with sleep.”

“I feel the same way,” answered Billie drowsily.  “We can catch up with them later.  Suppose we take a little repose, as a French lady I knew used to say.”

The two girls removed their hats, and making pillows of their jackets they stretched themselves on the soft carpet of pine needles.  Presently, lulled by the monotonous water song and the murmur of the wind through the trees, they dropped off into a sleep so profound and deep that they did not hear the voices of their friends returning to search for them.

The enchantment of centuries had woven its net about their feet and stilled their senses; for Nikko is called the “City of Rest,” and an endless number of saints and holy men who once lived and prayed among its groves now sleep there.

The two young girls sank deeper and deeper into the peaceful sleep which the atmosphere of Nikko breathes.  Their souls seemed to have entered the region of the most profound rest that may come to a living person.

And while they slept the sun sank and the twilight of the forest faded into night.  But the searchers had taken the wrong path and their cries grew fainter and fainter as they ranged the mountainside for the lost girls.  Among the trees their paper lanterns glowed like fireflies and occasionally there was a long cry:  “A-hai!”

But Buddha himself must have placed the seal of sleep on the young girls’ eyes.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE STORM KING.

While two of the Motor Maids slept in the sacred wood on the mountain two others rested in one of the bedrooms of the villa straining their ears for sounds of the returning search party.  It was only eight o’clock, but Miss Campbell, worn out with excitement and fatigue, had already dropped off to sleep in the next room.

Nancy was quietly and softly weeping, her face buried in her pillow, and Elinor lay staring into the darkness.  Mr. Campbell had assured them that the girls could not be lost for long, and that the only mishap that could possibly come to them in that holy place was sleeping under the pine trees; but he could not conceal the anxiety he really felt, the anxiety of a father for his only daughter, the being he loved best in all the world.

Nancy had felt the anxiety, too, and remorse had entered into her soul; not because she had met Yoritomo in the garden and exchanged notes with him in a romantic manner, the notes having been hidden under a stone near the old shrine, for she was beginning dimly to realize that such things were only silly and common.  Her remorse was caused by something else more remote in her consciousness but looming bigger all the time.  The cruel letter she had written to Billie in anger