The cavalry of the enemy moved by in great numbers, killing every one they met, not a single person escaping; but when they reached the place where the magician sat, they went by without, apparently, seeing anything. Thus they continued till the evening, when all had passed by. The stranger and the people with him sat the day through without any harm overtaking them, even though they were in the midst of the enemy’s camp, as it were.
At last awaking to the fact that he was possessor of some wonderful magic, they all with one accord came and bowed before him, asking his name and his place of residence. He made no answer, however, but mounted his beautiful horse and rode swiftly away, no one being able to overtake him.
The day following the party fell in with a man who had been captured but had made his escape. They asked if he had seen anything special the day before. He said, “When I followed the barbarian army, passing such and such a point”—indicating the place where the magician had sat with the people—“we skirted great walls and precipitous rocks, against which no one could move, and so we passed by.”
Thus were the few yards of cotton cloth metamorphosed before the eyes of the passers-by.
XIV
THE OLD MAN WHO BECAME A FISH
Some years ago a noted official became the magistrate of Ko-song County. On a certain day a guest called on him to pay his respects, and when noon came the magistrate had a table of food prepared for him, on which was a dish of skate soup. When the guest saw the soup he twisted his features and refused it, saying, “To-day I am fasting from meat, and so beg to be excused.” His face grew very pale, and tears flowed from his eyes. The magistrate thought this behaviour strange, and asked him two or three times the meaning of it. When he could no longer withhold a reply, he went into all the particulars and told him the story.
“Your humble servant,” he said, “has in his life met with much unheard-of and unhappy experience, which he has never told to a living soul, but now that your Excellency asks it of me, I cannot refrain from telling. Your servant’s father was a very old man, nearly a hundred, when one day he was taken down with a high fever, in which his body was like a fiery furnace. Seeing the danger he was in, his children gathered about weeping, thinking that the time of his departure had surely come. But he lived, and a few days later said to us, ‘I am burdened with so great a heat in this sickness that I am not able to endure it longer. I would like to go out to the bank of the river that runs before the house and see the water flowing by, and be refreshed by it. Do not disobey me now, but carry me out at once to the water’s edge.’