ook has never seen his like. Oh, master! I hope
you will be hungry when you sit down to this fish. What a pity Mr. Li
couldn't help you to devour it!"

"Help to devour myself, eh?" grumbled poor Li, now almost dead for lack
of water. "You must take me for a cannibal, or some other sort of
savage."

Old Chang had now gone round the house to the servants' quarters, and,
after calling out the cook, held up poor Li by the tail for the chef to
inspect.

With a mighty jerk Li tore himself away and fell at the feet of his
faithful cook. "Save me, save me!" he cried out in despair; "this
miserable Chang is deaf and doesn't know that I am Mr. Li, his master.
My fish voice is not strong enough for his hearing. Only take me back to
the pond and set me free. You shall have a pension for life, wear good
clothes and eat good food, all the rest of your days. Only hear me and
obey! Listen, my dear cook, listen!"

"The thing seems to be talking," muttered the cook, "but such wonders
cannot be. Only ignorant old women or foreigners would believe that a
fish could talk." And seizing his former master by the tail, he swung
him on to a table, picked up a knife, and began to whet it on a stone.

"Oh, oh!" screamed Li, "you will stick a knife into me! You will scrape
off my beautiful shiny scales! You will whack off my lovely new fins!
You will murder your old master!"

"Well, you won't talk much longer," growled the cook, "I'll show you a
trick or two with the blade."

So saying, with a gigantic thrust, he plunged the knife deep into the
body of the trembling victim.

With a shrill cry of horror and despair, Mr. Li awoke from the deep
sleep into which he had fallen. His fever was gone, but he found himself
trembling with fear at thought of the terrible death that had come to
him in dreamland.

"Thanks be to Buddha, I am not a fish!" he cried out joyfully; "and now
I shall be well enough to enjoy the feast to which Mr. Sing has bidden
guests for to-morrow. But alas, now that I can eat the old fisherman's
prize carp, it has changed back into myself.

"If only the good of our dreams came true,
I shouldn't mind dreaming the whole day through."

BAMBOO AND THE TURTLE

[Illustration]

A party of visitors had been seeing the sights at Hsi Ling. They had
just passed down the Holy Way between the huge stone animals when
Bamboo, a little boy of twelve, son of a keeper, rushed out from his
father's house to see the manda