r 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 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 c