too much given to it.  If you have no objection, we’ll be a pair of bottle-and-glass chums.”  So they lay down and went to sleep again, Ch’e urging the young man to visit him often, and saying that they must have faith in each other.  The fox agreed to this, but when Ch’e awoke in the morning his bedfellow had already disappeared.  So he prepared a goblet of first-rate wine in expectation of his friend’s arrival, and at nightfall sure enough he came.  They then sat together drinking, and the fox cracked so many jokes that Ch’e said he regretted he had not known him before.  “And truly I don’t know how to repay your kindness,” replied the former, “in preparing all this nice wine for me.”  “Oh,” said Ch’e, “what’s a pint or so of wine?—­nothing worth speaking of.”  “Well,” rejoined the fox, “you are only a poor scholar, and money isn’t so easily to be got.  I must see if I can’t secure a little wine capital for you.”  Next evening, when he arrived, he said to Ch’e, “Two miles down toward the south-east you will find some silver lying by the wayside.  Go early in the morning and get it.”  So on the morrow Ch’e set off, and actually obtained two lumps of silver, with which he bought some choice morsels to help them out with their wine that evening.  The fox now told him that there was a vault in his backyard which he ought to open; and when he did so he found therein more than a hundred strings of cash. [43] “Now then,” cried Ch’e, delighted, “I shall have no more anxiety about funds for buying wine with all this in my purse!” “Ah,” replied the fox, “the water in a puddle is not inexhaustible.  I must do something further for you.”  Some days afterward the fox said to Ch’e, “Buckwheat is very cheap in the market just now.  Something is to be done in that line.”  Accordingly Ch’e bought over forty tons, and thereby incurred general ridicule; but by and by there was a bad drought, and all kinds of grain and beans were spoilt.  Only buckwheat would grow, and Ch’e sold off his stock at a profit of 1000 per cent.  His wealth thus began to increase; he bought two hundred acres of rich land, and always planted his crops, corn, millet, or what not, upon the advice of the fox secretly given him beforehand.  The fox looked on Ch’e’s wife as a sister, and on Ch’e’s children as his own; but when subsequently Ch’e died it never came to the house again.

The Alchemist [44]

At Ch’ang-an there lived a scholar named Chia Tzu-lung, who one day noticed a very refined-looking stranger; and, on making inquiries about him, learned that he was a Mr Chen who had taken lodgings hard by.  Accordingly, Chia called next day and sent in his card, but did not see Chen, who happened to be out at the time.  The same thing occurred thrice; and at length Chia engaged some one to watch and let him know when Mr Chen was at home.  However, even then the latter would not come forth to receive his guest, and Chia had to go in and rout him out.  The two now entered into conversation, and soon became