Wang Chih was only a poor man, but he had a wife and children to love, and they made him so happy that he would not have changed places with the Emperor himself.  
He worked in the fields all day, and at night his wife always had a bowl of rice ready for his supper. And sometimes, for a treat, she made him some bean soup, or gave him a little dish of fried pork.
 
But they could not afford pork very 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 at 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
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went up the mountain slope to find a small tree 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 thirsty when he came into the cave, as he had not waited to have his midday meal with the other field-workers; but now he felt quite comforted and refreshed.
 
He sat there some time longer, and noticed that as the old men frowned over the chessboard, their beards grew longer and longer, until they swept the floor of the cave, and even found their way out of the door.
 
"I hope my beard will never grow as quickly," said Wang Chih, as he rose and took up his axe again.
 
Then one of the old men spoke, for the first time. "Our
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beards have not grown quickly, young man. How long is it since you came here?"
 
"About half an hour, I dare say," replied Wang Chih. But as he spoke, the axe crumbled to dust beneath his fingers, and the second chess-player laughed, and pointed to the little brown sweetmeats on the table.
 
"Half an hour, or half a century—aye, half a thousand years, are all alike to him who tastes of these. Go down into your village and see what has happened since you left it."
 
So Wang Chih went down as quickly as he could from the mountain, and found the fields where he had worked covered with houses, and a busy town where his own little village had been. In vain he looked for his house, his wife, and his children.
 
There were strange faces everywhere; and although when evening came the Feast of Lanterns was being held once more, there was no Ho-Seen-Ko carrying her red and yellow fish, or Han Chung with his flaming red ball.
 
At last he found a woman, a very, very old woman, who told him that when she was a tiny girl she remembered her grandmother saying how, when she was a tiny girl, a poor young man had been spirited away by the Genii of the mountains, on the day of the Feast of Lanterns, leaving his wife and little children with only a few handfuls of rice in the house.
 
"Moreover, if you wait while the procession passes, you will see two children dressed to represent Han Chung and Ho-Seen-Ko, and their mother carrying the empty rice-bowl between them; for this is done every year to remind people to take care of the widow and fatherless," she said. So Wang Chih waited in the street; and in a little while the procession came to an end; and the last three figures in it were a boy and a girl, dressed like his own two children, walking on either side of a young woman carrying a rice-bowl. But she was not like his wife in anything but her dress, and the children were not at all like Han Chung and Ho-Seen-Ko; and poor Wang Chih's heart was very heavy as he walked away out of the town.
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He slept out on the mountain, and early in the morning found his way back to the cave where the two old men were playing chess.
 
At first they said they could do nothing for him, and told him to go away and not disturb them; but Wang Chih would not go, and they soon found the only way to get rid of him was to give him some really good advice.
 
"You must go to the White Hare of the Moon, and ask him for a bottle of the elixir of life. If you drink that you will live forever," said one of them.
 
"But I don't want to live forever," objected Wang Chih. "I wish to go back and live in the days when my wife and children were here."
 
"Ah, well! For that you must mix the elixir of life with some water out of the sky-dragon's mouth."
 
"And where is the sky-dragon to be found?" inquired Wang Chih.
 
"In the sky, of course. You really ask very stupid questions. He lives in a cloud-cave. And when he comes out of it he breathes fire, and sometimes water. If he is breathing fire you will be burnt up, but if it is only water, you will e............