Page:Chinese Fairy Tales (H. Giles, 1920).djvu/14

12 his father not to make him go, lest the rope should break, and he should fall from a height and get killed; but his father wouldn't listen to a word, and only told him to be quick about it. So up went the boy, hand over hand, until he too disappeared in the clouds.

A few minutes passed, while I, and all the people round, stood open-mouthed, looking upwards. Then, all of a sudden, down fell the hugest peach I have ever seen. It was quite as big as a basin. The father picked it up with a smiling face, and was just showing the men nearest him that it was a real peach, and inviting them to taste it, when down came the rope with a run, and fell, yards and yards of it, on the ground close to him. "Ai-yah! ai-yah!" he shrieked out, "what will my son do now? How will he get down?" The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when something else fell with a bang. It was the boy's head! Then the poor father began to weep, and tears ran down his cheeks. "The gardener up there must have caught him, poor lad. Why did I send him up? Why did you ask me for peaches? My poor boy, my poor boy, I shall never see you again." While he was speaking, and hugging the dead boy's head, first the arms, then the legs, and last of all, the body of the lad, fell down from the sky. We were all filled with horror at the sight, and the father, gathering the limbs together, put them and the head into his box, and turned to us, saying, "He was my only son. Wherever I used to go, he went. Now I am left alone, to bury him. He lost his life for your peach; will you not give me some money to help pay for his funeral?" By