often; he generally had to be
content with rice.

One morning, as he was setting off to his work, his wife sent Han
Chung, his son, running after him to ask him to bring home some
firewood.

"I shall have to go up into the mountain for it at noon," he said. "Go
and bring me my axe, Han Chung."

Han Chung ran for his father's axe, and Ho-Seen-Ko, his little sister,
came out of the cottage with him.

"Remember it is the Feast of Lanterns to-night, father," she said.
"Don't fall asleep up on the mountain; we want you to come back and
light them for us."

She had a lantern in the shape of a fish, painted red and black and
yellow, and Han Chung had got a big round one, all bright crimson, to
carry in the procession; and, besides that, there were two large
lanterns to be hung outside the cottage door as soon as it grew dark.

Wang Chih was not likely to forget the Feast of Lanterns, for the
children had talked of nothing else for a month, and he promised to
come home as early as he could.

At noontide, when his fellow-labourers gave up working, and sat down
to rest and eat, Wang Chih took his axe and went up the mountain slope
to find a small tree that he might cut down for fuel.

He walked a long way, and at last saw one growing at the mouth of a
cave.

"This will be just the thing," he said to himself. But, before
striking the first blow, he peeped into the cave to see if it were
empty.

To his surprise, two old men, with long, white beards, were sitting
inside playing chess, as quietly as mice, with their eyes fixed on
the chessboard.

Wang Chih knew something of chess, and he stepped in and watched them
for a few minutes.

"As soon as they look up, I can ask them if I may chop down a tree,"
he said to himself. But they did not look up, and by-and-by Wang Chih
got so interested in the game that he put down his axe and sat on the
floor to watch it better.

The two old men sat cross-legged on the ground, and the chessboard
rested on a slab, like a stone table, between them.

On one corner of the slab lay a heap of small, brown objects which
Wang Chih took at first to be date stones; but after a time the
chess-players ate one each, and put one in Wang Chih's mouth; and he
found it was not a date stone at all.

It was a delicious kind of sweetmeat, the like of which he had never
tasted before; and the strangest thing about it was that it took his
hunger and thirst away.

He had been both hungry and thi