ess and do him the favour of picking up
the second shoe and restoring it to him.

With the same cheery manner, as though he were not being asked to
perform a servile task, Chang-lung once more stepped into the shallow
brook and bringing back the shoe, proceeded without any hesitation to
repeat the process of putting it on the old man's foot.

The fairy was now perfectly satisfied. Thanking Chang-lung for his
kindness, he presented him with a book, which he took out of one of the
sleeves of his jacket, and urging him to study it with all diligence,
vanished out of his sight. The meeting that day on the country bridge
had an important influence on the destiny of Chang-lung, who in time
rose to great eminence and finally became Prime Minister of China.

As Monkey studied the golden words before him, he contrasted his own
conduct with that of Chang-lung, and, pricked to the heart by a
consciousness of his wrong, he started at once, without even bidding
farewell to the Dragon Prince of the Sea, to return to the service of
Sam-Chaong.

He was just emerging from the ocean, when who should be standing
waiting for him on the yellow sands of the shore but the Goddess of
Mercy herself, who had come all the way from her distant home to warn
him of the consequences that would happen to him were he ever again to
fail in the duty she had assigned him of leading Sam-Chaong to the
Western Heaven.

Terrified beyond measure at the awful doom which threatened him, and at
the same time truly repentant for the wrong he had committed, Monkey
bounded up far above the highest mountains which rear their peaks to
the sky, and fled with incredible speed until he stood once more by the
side of Sam-Chaong.

No reproof fell from the latter's lips as the truant returned to his
post. A tender gracious smile was the only sign of displeasure that he
evinced.

"I am truly glad to have you come back to me," he said, "for I was lost
without your guidance in this unknown world in which I am travelling.
I may tell you, however, that since you left me the Goddess appeared to
me and comforted me with the assurance that you would ere long resume
your duties and be my friend, as you have so nobly been in the past.
She was very distressed at my forlorn condition and was so determined
that nothing of the kind should happen again in the future, that she
graciously presented me with a mystic cap wrought and embroidered by
the fairy hands of the maidens in