TWO:Except in such moments, however, the war seemed farther away than it had for months and months. But about eleven o'clock we began to find the way scored by the fresh ruts of heavy wheels and the dust deepened by hundred of hoofs. The tops and faces of the roadside banks were newly trampled and torn by clambering human feet. Here was a canteen, smashed in a wheel-track; yonder a fragment of harness; here lay a broken hame, there was the half of a russet brogan and yonder a ragged sock stained and bloody.He let me ponder the fact a long time. "Lieutenant," I asked at length, "did you know your plot against the two Olivers would cross her wishes?" TWO: "We are outside of treaty limits, and so we were obliged to have passports to come here. Foreigners may go freely within twenty-five miles of any of the treaty ports without special permission, but Kioto is just beyond the limit, as it is thirty miles from Osaka, and therefore the Japanese permit is needed. We had ours from the consul at Kobe, and had no trouble at all on coming here. A Japanese official called for them soon after we came to the hotel, and he bowed low as he received them. Then he spread the documents on the floor, and as he did so he fell on his hands and knees so as to bring his nose within six inches of the papers, and curve his back into the shape of an arch. He read the passports and copied our names into his note-book; or, at least, I suppose he did so, though I can't say positively. We can stay the time named in the permit without further interference; but if we stopped too long, we should probably be told some morning that a gentleman at Kobe was anxious to see us, and we had better start for there by the first train. The Japanese are so polite that they will never say a rude thing if they can help it, and they will even tell a plump falsehood rather than be uncivil. But the same thing has occurred in America, and so the Japs are not much worse than others, after all. TWO:In front of a house by the roadside some coopers were hooping a vat, and Frank instantly recognized the fidelity of a picture he had seen by a native artist showing how the Japanese coopers performed their work. They make excellent articles in their line, and sell them for an astonishingly low price, when we compare them with similar things from an American maker. The fidelity of the work is to be commended, and the pails and tubs from their hands will last a long time without the least necessity of repairs. TWO: