Page:The Chinese Boy and Girl.djvu/169

Rh One day she went to her husband, and, bowing low, requested that he return the clothes he had hid away, and he, thinking the presence of the children a sufficient guaranty for her remaining in his home, told her he had put them in an old, dry well hard by the place where she had been bathing.

No sooner had she secured them than the aspect of their home was changed. The Cow-herd's wife once more became the Spinning Girl and hied her to her heavenly abode.

It so happened that her husband had a piece of cow-skin which gave him power over earth and air. Snatching up this, with his ox-goad, he followed in the footsteps of his fleeing wife.

Arriving at their heavenly home the happy couple sought the joys of married life. The Spinning Girl gave up her loom, and the Cow-herd his cattle, until their negligence annoyed the King of Heaven, and he repented having let her leave her loom. He called upon the Western Royal Mother for advice. After consultation they decided that the two should be separated. The Queen, with a single stroke of her great silver hairpin, drew a line across the heavens, and from that time the Heavenly River has flowed between them, and they are destined to dwell forever on the two sides of the Milky Way.

What had seemed to the youthful pair the promise of perpetual joy, became a condition of unending grief. They were on the two sides of a bridgeless river, in plain sight of each other, but forever debarred from hearing the voice or pressing the land of the one beloved, doomed to perpetual toil unlit by any ray of joy or hope.