f it too would be
carried off into the blue ether, the guests turned pale and clutched
their chairs for support, but not even the mandarin dared to speak, so
sure were they now that they were in the presence of fairies.

"Everything is ready for the journey," said old Chang calmly.

"What! shall you leave us?" asked the mayor, finding his voice again.

"I? Oh, no, my old bones are not spry enough for quick climbing. My son
here will bring us the magic peach. He is handsome and active enough to
enter that heavenly garden. Graceful, oh graceful is that peach tree--of
course, you remember the line from the poem--and a graceful man must
pluck the fruit."

The mandarin was still more surprised at the juggler's knowledge of a
famous poem from the classics. It made him and his friends all the more
certain that the newcomers were indeed fairies.

The young man at a sign from his father tightened his belt and the bands
about his ankles, and then, with a graceful gesture to the astonished
people, sprang upon the magic string, balanced himself for a moment on
the steep incline, and then ran as nimbly up as a sailor would have
mounted a rope ladder. Higher and higher he climbed till he seemed no
bigger than a lark ascending into the blue sky, and then, like some tiny
speck, far, far away, on the western horizon.

The people gazed in open-mouthed wonder. They were struck dumb and
filled with some nameless fear; they hardly dared to look at the
enchanter who stood calmly in their midst, smoking his long-stemmed
pipe.

The mandarin, ashamed of having laughed at and threatened this man
who was clearly a fairy, did not know what to say. He snapped his long
finger nails and looked at his guests in mute astonishment. The visitors
silently drank their tea, and the crowd of sightseers craned their necks
in a vain effort to catch sight of the vanished fairy. Only one in all
that assembly, a bright-eyed little boy of eight, dared to break the
silence, and he caused a hearty burst of merriment by crying out, "Oh,
daddy, will the bad young man fly off into the sky and leave his poor
father all alone?"

The greybeard laughed loudly with the others, and tossed the lad a
copper. "Ah, the good boy," he said smiling, "he has been well trained
to love his father; no fear of foreign ways spoiling his filial piety."

After a few moments of waiting, old Chang laid aside his pipe and fixed
his eyes once more on the western sky. "It is coming,"