he said quietly.
"The peach will soon be here."

[Illustration: "HIGHER AND HIGHER HE CLIMBED."]

Suddenly he held out his hand as if to catch some falling object, but,
look as they would, the people could see nothing. Swish! thud! it came
like a streak of light, and, lo, there in the magician's fingers was a
peach, the most beautiful specimen the people had ever seen, large and
rosy. "Straight from the garden of the gods," said Chang, handing the
fruit to the mandarin, "a peach in the Second Moon, and the snow hardly
off the ground."

Trembling with excitement, the official took the peach and cut it open.
It was large enough for all his guests to have a taste, and such a taste
it was! They smacked their lips and wished for more, secretly thinking
that never again would ordinary fruit be worth the eating.

But all this time the old juggler, magician, fairy or whatever you
choose to call him, was looking anxiously into the sky. The result of
this trick was more than he had bargained for. True, he had been able to
produce the magic peach which the mandarin had called for, but his son,
where was his son? He shaded his eyes and looked far up into the blue
heavens, and so did the people, but no one could catch a glimpse of the
departed youth.

"Oh, my son, my son," cried the old man in despair, "how cruel is the
fate that has robbed me of you, the only prop of my declining years! Oh,
my boy, my boy, would that I had not sent you on so perilous a journey!
Who now will look after my grave when I am gone?"

Suddenly the silken cord on which the young man had sped so daringly
into the sky, gave a quick jerk which almost toppled over the post to
which it was tied, and there, before the very eyes of the people, it
fell from the lofty height, a silken pile on the ground in front of
them.

The greybeard uttered a loud cry and covered his face with his hands.
"Alas! the whole story is plain enough," he sobbed. "My boy was caught
in the act of plucking the magic peach from the garden of the gods, and
they have thrown him into prison. Woe is me! Ah! woe is me!"

The mandarin and his friends were deeply touched by the old man's grief,
and tried in vain to comfort him. "Perhaps he will return," they said.
"Have courage!"

"Yes, but in what a shape?" replied the magician. "See! even now they
are restoring him to his father."

The people looked, and they saw twirling and twisting through the air
the young man's arm. It fell up