As soon as he heard what Wang Chih wanted, he opened two windows at
the back of the hut, and told him to look through each of them in
turn.

"Tell me what you see," said the Hare, going back to the table where
he was pounding the drugs.

"I can see a great many houses and people," said Wang Chih, "and
streets--why, this is the town I was in yesterday, the one which has
taken the place of my old village."

Wang Chih stared, and grew more and more puzzled. Here he was up in
the moon, and yet he could have thrown a stone into the busy street of
the Chinese town below his window.

"How does it come here?" he stammered, at last.

"Oh, that is my secret," replied the wise old Hare. "I know how to do
a great many things which would surprise you. But the question is, do
you want to go back there?"

Wang Chih shook his head.

"Then close the window. It is the window of the Present. And look
through the other, which is the window of the Past."

Wang Chih obeyed, and through this window he saw his own dear little
village, and his wife, and Han Chung and Ho-Seen-Ko jumping about her
as she hung up the coloured lanterns outside the door.

"Father won't be in time to light them for us, after all," Han Chung
was saying.

Wang Chih turned, and looked eagerly at the White Hare.

"Let me go to them," he said. "I have got a bottle of water from the
sky-dragon's mouth, and--"

"That's all right," said the White Hare. "Give it to me."

He opened the bottle, and mixed the contents carefully with a few
drops of the elixir of life, which was clear as crystal, and of which
each drop shone like a diamond as he poured it in.

"Now, drink this," he said to Wang Chih, "and it will give you the
power of living once more in the past, as you desire."

Wang Chih held out his hand, and drank every drop.

The moment he had done so, the window grew larger, and he saw some
steps leading from it down into the village street.

Thanking the Hare, he rushed through it, and ran toward his own house,
arriving in time to take the taper from his wife's hand with which she
was about to light the red and yellow lanterns which swung over the
door.

"What has kept you so long, father? Where have you been?" asked Han
Chung, while little Ho-Seen-Ko wondered why he kissed and embraced
them all so eagerly.

But Wang Chih did not tell them his adventures just then; only when
darkness fell, and the Feast of Lanterns began, he took his part in it
w