s will
bring me bad luck for killing something in the woods. If you thought you
could drive me from this place by such a trick, you'll soon find you
were mistaken, for I was first upon this spot and you have no right to
give me orders."

"Stop your chatter, bumpkin, and take this copper for your trouble. We
thought we were doing you a favour. If you are blind, there's no one but
yourself to blame. Come, Pao-shu, let us go back and have a look at this
wonderful snake that has been hiding in a chunk of gold."

Laughing merrily, the two companions left the countryman and turned back
in search of the nugget.

"If I am not mistaken," said the student, "the gold lies beyond that
fallen tree."

"Quite true; we shall soon see the dead snake."

Quickly they crossed the remaining stretch of pathway, with their eyes
fixed intently on the ground. Arriving at the spot where they had left
the shining treasure, what was their surprise to see, not the lump of
gold, not the dead snake described by the idler, but, instead, two
beautiful golden nuggets, each larger than the one they had seen at
first.

Each friend picked up one of these treasures and handed it joyfully to
his companion.

"At last the fairies have rewarded you for your unselfishness!" said
Ki-wu.

"Yes," answered Pao-shu, "by granting me a chance to give you your
deserts."

THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT SCOLD

[Illustration]

Old Wang lived in a village near Nanking. He cared for nothing in the
world but to eat good food and plenty of it. Now, though this Wang was
by no means a poor man, it made him very sad to spend money, and so
people called him in sport, the Miser King, for Wang is the Chinese word
for king. His greatest pleasure was to eat at some one else's table when
he knew that the food would cost him nothing, and you may be sure that
at such times he always licked his chopsticks clean. But when he was
spending his own money, he tightened his belt and drank a great deal
of water, eating very little but scraps such as his friends would have
thrown to the dogs. Thus people laughed at him and said:

"When Wang an invitation gets,
He chews and chews until he sweats,
But, when his own food he must eat.
The tears flow down and wet his feet."

One day while Wang was lying half asleep on the bank of a stream that
flowed near his house he began to feel hungry. He had been in that
spot all day without tasting anything. At last he saw a flo