Chapter VI: Part 6

No one had treated Eurydice so rudely in all her life before. Even Pan had gathered flowers for her to twine into garlands and had refrained from teasing her as he did almost all the other nymphs. And here she was, a long distance from Orpheus and pursued by an ugly tempered country man! Eurydice ran like the wind, the bee-man coming fast behind her. She was much fleeter than he and would have reached the woods safely, but she stepped suddenly on a snake that she had not seen as it lay coiled up in the grass. The snake stung Eurydice's bare feet and she dropped down on the ground.

"It serves her right!" the bee-man said, not going to see how badly she was hurt. And with that he went back to his bees.

Aristaeus was the very first bee-man, the myths tell us. When the gods made the little creatures of the earth they made also the honey bees and taught them how to build themselves homes in hollow trees or holes in the rocks, to find the nectar in the flowers, and make from it their thick, golden honey. Aristaeus was the son of the water-nymph Cyrene, and he came to Arcadia with the remembrance of the music of the waters and the brightness of the sun in his heart, but when he discovered how to attract the bees to his farm and take their honey away from them and sell it, he forgot everything except his business. That was when he began to dislike Orpheus and to become blind to the fair country in which he lived.

"Three hives are swarming to-day," the bee-man thought as he came home. "I ought to be able to get a good sum for the honey." Then, as he reached the orchard where his hives were placed on the wall, he looked about him in amazement. Hives, bees, all were gone. Not a buzz, a sting, or a single drop of honey was left!

Aristaeus looked throughout the entire countryside for his bees for days, but he could not find a single one. At last he gave up the search and did what a good many boys and girls would be apt to do in the same emergency. He went to ask the advice of his mother, the sea-nymph Cyrene.

He went to the edge of the river where he knew she lived and called her.

"O mother, the pride of my life is taken away from me. I have lost my precious bees. My care and skill have availed me nothing. Can you turn from me this blow of misfortune?"

His mother heard these complaints as she sat in her palace at the bottom of the river with her attendant nymphs around her. They were busy spinning and weaving beautiful designs in water weeds and painting pebbles while another told stories to amuse the rest. But the sad voice of the bee-man interrupted them and one put her head above the water. Seeing Aristaeus, she returned and told his mother, who ordered that he be brought down to her.

At the command of Cyrene, the river opened itself and let him pass through, as it stood curled like a mountain on either side. The bee-man descended to the place where the fountains of the great rivers lie. He saw the enormous rock beds of the waters and was almost deafened by their roar as he saw them hurrying off in all their different directions to water the face of the earth. Then Aristaeus came to his mother's palace of shells and stone and he was taken to her apartment where he told her his troubles.

Cyrene, being a dweller of the waters which are the fountain of life, was very wise. She understood at once that her son had made a mistake in not seeing that it was possible to combine beauty and usefulness. Arcadia needed bees, but it needed Orpheus and his lute also, and the gods had punished the bee-man for his sordidness. Still, he was her son and Cyrene decided to try and help Aristaeus out of his difficulty.

"You must go to old Proteus, who is the herdsman of Neptune's sea-calves," Cyrene said. "He can tell you, my son, how to get back your bees, for he is a great prophet. You will have to force him to help you, however. If you are able to seize him, chain him at once; he will answer your questions in order to be released. I will conduct you to the cave where he comes at noon to take his nap. Then you can easily secure him, but when he finds himself in chains he will cause you a great deal of trouble. He will make a noise like the crackling of flames so as to frighten you into loosing your hold on the chain. Or he may become a wild boar, a fierce tiger, a lion with ravenous jaws or a devouring dragon. But you have only to keep Proteus fast bound and when he finds all his arts to be of no avail he will return to his natural shape and obey your commands."

So Cyrene led Aristaeus to the cave by the sea and showed him where to hide behind a rock while she, herself, arose and took her place behind the clouds. Promptly at noon old Proteus, covered with dripping green weeds, issued from the water followed by a herd of sea calves who spread themselves out on the shore. The herdsman of the sea counted them, sat down on the floor of the cave, and then in a very short time had stretched himself out, fast asleep. Aristaeus waited until he was snoring and then he bound him with a heavy chain he had brought for the purpose.

When Proteus awoke and found himself captured, he struggled like a wild animal at bay. Next, he turned to flame and then, in succession to many terrible beasts, but Aristaeus never once let go of the chain that secured him. At last he returned to his true form and spoke angrily to Aristaeus.

"Who are you, who boldly invades my domain and what do you want?" Proteus demanded.

"You know already," the bee-man replied, "for you have the powers of a prophet and nothing is hidden from you. I have lost my bees, and I want to have them returned to me."

At these words, the prophet fixed his eyes on Aristaeus with a piercing look.

"Your trouble is the just reward sent you by the gods because you killed Eurydice," he said. "To avenge her death, her companion nymphs sent this destruction to your bees."

"I killed Eurydice?" Aristaeus asked in amazement. "Does she no longer listen to the music of Orpheus?"

"Yes, but not in Arcadia," Proteus explained. "When she was stung by the viper, she was obliged to make her way alone to the dark realm of Pluto. Orpheus sang his grief to all who breathed the upper air, both gods and men, and then he started out to search for Eurydice. He passed through the crowd of ghosts and entered the realm beyond the dark river Styx. There, in front of the throne of Pluto, he sang of his longing that Eurydice might be restored to him, until the cheeks of even the Fates were wet with tears.

"Pluto himself gave way to Orpheus' music and called Eurydice. She came to Orpheus, limping on her wounded foot. They roam the happy fields of the gods together now, he leading sometimes and sometimes she. And Jupiter has placed Orpheus' lyre among the stars."

As Proteus finished telling his story, the penitent Aristaeus fell on the ground at his feet.

"What can I do to appease the anger of the gods for my wickedness?" he asked.

"You may use your skill to build temples to the two in the country of Arcadia which they so loved," Proteus said. "Take your way home. Forget your own gains for a while and gather stones to fit together for the altars."

So the bee-man did this, and he discovered that he came to enjoy the work very much. He took pleasure in cutting and polishing the stones until they were as beautiful as those of any temple in Greece. As he worked in the grove that he had selected for his building he often thought that he detected the music of Orpheus' lyre as the birds sang, and the streams rippled, and the wind blew through the leaves. He found it very sweet indeed.

One day, shortly after his beautiful altars were built, Aristaeus found a wonder. It was spring, when the nearby orchards were white and sweet with blossoms, and there were all his honey bees returned, and busily starting their hives under the shadow of the temple of Eurydice.

WHEN POMONA SHARED HER APPLES.

Pomona was a dryad, and Venus had given her a wild apple tree to be her home. As Pomona grew up under the shadow of its branches, protecting the buds from winter storms, dressing herself in its pink blossoms in the spring time, and holding up her hands to catch its apples in the fall, she found that her love for this fruit tree was greater than anything else in her life. At last Pomona planted the first orchard and lived in it and tended it.

The dryads were those favored children of the gods who lived in the ancient woods and groves, each in her special tree. Dressed in fluttering green garments, they danced through the woodland ways with steps as light as the wind, sang to the tune of Pan's pipe, or fled, laughing, from the Fauns. They missed Pomona in the woods, and tales came to these forest dwellers of the wonders she was working in the raising of fruits fit for the table of the gods.

She had trees on which golden oranges and yellow lemons hung among deep green leaves. She raised citrons and limes, and even cultivated the wide spreading tamarind tree whose fruit was of such value to Epictetus, the physician of Greece, in cooling the fires of fever. The wood folk left their mossy hiding places to peer over the wall of Pomona's orchard and watch her working so busily there.

They were a strange company. Pan came from Arcadia where he was the god of flocks and shepherds. He had fastened some reeds from the stream together to make his pipes, and on them he could play the merriest music. It sounded like birds and the singing of brooks and summer breezes all in one. With Pan came his family of Fauns, the deities of the woods and fields. Their bodies were covered with bristling hair, there were short, sprouting horns on their heads, and their feet were shaped like those of a goat. Pan was of the same strange guise as the Fauns were, but to distinguish his rank, he wore a garland of pine about his head.

These and Pomona's sisters, the dryads, watched her longingly from the budding time of the year until the harvest. It was a pleasant sight to see Pomona taking care of her apples. She was never without a pruning knife which she carried as proudly as Jupiter did his sceptre. With it she trimmed away the foliage of her fruit trees wherever it had grown too thick, cut the branches that had straggled out of shape, and sometimes deftly split a twig to graft in a new one so that the tree might bear different, better apples.

Pomona even led streams of water close to the roots of the trees so that they need not suffer from drought. She looked, herself, a part of the orchard, for she wore a wreath of bright fruits and her arms were often full of apples almost as huge and golden as the famous apples of Hesperides.

The dryads and the Fauns begged one, at least, of the apples, but Pomona refused them all. She had grown selfish through the seasons in which she had brought her orchard to a state of such bounteous perfection. She would not give away a single apple, and she kept her gate always locked. So the wood creatures were obliged to go home empty handed to their forest places.

In those days Vertumnus was one of the lesser gods who watched over the seasons. The fame of Pomona's fruits came to the ear of Vertumnus and he was suddenly possessed of a great desire to share the orchard and its care with her. He sent messengers in the form of the birds to plead his cause with Pomona, but she was just as cruel to him as she had been to the family of Pan and to her own sisters. She had made up her mind that she would never share her orchard with any one in the world.

Vertumnus would not give up, though. He had the power to change his form as he willed, and he decided to go to Pomona in disguise to see if he could not win her by appealing to her pity. She was obliged to buy her grain, and one day in October when the apple boughs bent low with their great red and yellow balls a reaper came to the orchard gate with a basket of ears of corn for Pomona.

"I ask no gold for my grain," he said to the goddess, "I want only a basket full of fruit in return for it."

"My fruit is not to be given away or bartered for. It is mine and mine alone until it spoils," Pomona replied, driving the reaper away.

But the following day a farmer stopped at the orchard, an ox goad in his hand as if he had just unyoked a pair of weary oxen from his hay cart, left them resting beside some stream, and had gone on to ask refreshment for himself. Pomona invited him into her orchard, but she did not offer him a single apple. As soon as the sun began to lower she bade him be on his way.

In the days that followed Vertumnus came to Pomona in many guises. He appeared with a pruning hook and a ladder as if he were a vine dresser ready and willing to climb up into her trees and help her gather the harvest. But Pomona scorned his services. Then Vertumnus trudged along as a discharged soldier in need of alms, and again with a fishing rod and a string of fish to exchange for only one apple. Each time that Vertumnus came disguised to Pomona he found her more beautiful and her orchard a place of greater plenty than ever; but the richer her harvest the deeper was her greed. She refused to share even a half of one of her apples.

At last, when the vines were dripping with purple juice of the grape and the boughs of the fruit trees hung so heavily that they touched the ground, a strange woman hobbled down the road and stopped at Pomona's gate. Her hair was white and she was obliged to lean on a staff. Pomona opened the gate and the crone entered and sat down on a bank, admiring the trees.

"Your orchard does you great credit, my daughter," she said to Pomona.

Then she pointed to a grape vine that twined itself about the trunk and branches of an old oak. The oak was massive and strong, and the vine clung to it in safety and had covered itself with bunches of beautiful purple grapes.

"If that tree stood alone," the old woman explained to Pomona, "with no vine to cling to it, it would have nothing to offer but its useless leaves. And if the vine did not have the tree to cling to, it would have to lie prostrate on the ground.

"You should take a lesson from the vine. Might not your orchard be still more fruitful if you were to open the gate to Vertumnus who has charge of the seasons and can help you as the oak helps the vine? The gods believe in sharing the gifts they give the earth. No one who is selfish can prosper for long."

"Tell me about this Vertumnus, good mother," Pomona asked curiously.

"I know Vertumnus as well as I know myself," the crone replied. "He is not a wandering god, but belongs among these hills and pastures of our fair land. He is young and handsome and has the power to take upon himself any form that he may wish. He likes the same things that you do, gardening, and caring for the ruddy fruits. Venus, who gave you an apple tree to be your first home, hates a hard heart and if you will persist in living alone in your orchard, refusing to share your apples, she is likely to punish you by sending frosts to blight your young fruits and terrible winds to break the boughs."

Pomona clasped her hands in fear. She suddenly understood how true was everything that this old woman said. She had known a spring-time when a storm of wind and hail had shaken off the apple blossoms, and frosts had touched the fruits one fall before she had been able to pick them.

"I will open my gate to the country people and to strangers," she said. "I will open it also to Vertumnus if he is still willing to share my orchard and my work."

As Pomona spoke, the old woman rose and her gray hair turned to the dark locks of Vertumnus. Her wrinkles faded in the glow of his sunburned cheeks. Her travel stained garments were replaced by Vertumnus' russet gardening smock and her staff to his pruning fork. He seemed to Pomona like the sun bursting through a cloud. She had never really seen him before, having never looked at anyone except with the eyes of selfishness. Vertumnus and Pomona began the harvesting together, and they opened the gate wide to let in those who had need of sharing their plenty.

Then the fauns danced in and made merry to the tunes that Pan played. The dryads found new homes for themselves in the trunks of the trees, and the seasons gave rain and sunshine in greater abundance than ever before as these two pruned, and trimmed, and grafted the trees and vines together.

Achelous, the river god, took his way past the orchard kingdom of Pomona and Vertumnus and brought with him Plenty who was able to fill her horn with gifts of fruit for all, apples, pears, grapes, oranges, plums, and citrons until it overflowed. Ever since the October when Pomona opened her gate and shared her apples, an orchard has been a place of beauty, bounty, and play.

HOW PSYCHE REACHED MOUNT OLYMPUS.

Once upon a time there was a king of Greece who had three beautiful daughters, but the youngest, who was named Psyche, was the most beautiful of all. The fame of her lovely face and the charm of her whole being were so great that strangers from the neighboring countries came in crowds to enjoy the sight and they paid Psyche the homage of love that was due to Venus herself. Venus' temple was deserted, and as Psyche passed by the people sang her praises, and strewed her way with flowers and wreaths.

Venus had a son, Cupid, who was dearer to her than any other being on Mount Olympus or in the earth. Like every mother, Venus had great ambitions for the future of her son, but she was not always able to follow him, for Cupid had wings and a golden bow and arrows with which he was fond of playing among mortals. What was Venus' wrath to discover at last that Cupid had lost his heart to Psyche, the lovely maiden of earth! It was like a fairy story in which a prince marries a peasant girl and may not bring her home to the palace because of her mean birth. Venus quite refused to recognize Psyche or award her a place in the honored family of the gods.

Cupid and Psyche had a very wonderful earthly palace in which to live. Golden pillars supported the vaulted roof, and the walls of the apartments of state were richly carved and hung with embroidered tapestries of many colors. When Psyche wished food, all she had to do was to seat herself in an alcove when a table immediately appeared without the aid of servants and covered itself with rare fruits and rich cakes and honey. When she longed for music, she had a feast of it played by invisible lutes, and with a chorus of harmonious voices. But Psyche was not happy in this life of luxury, for she had to be alone so much of the time. Venus could not take Cupid away from her altogether, but she allowed him to be with Psyche only in the hours of darkness. He fled before the dawn.

There had been a direful prophecy in Psyche's family of which her sisters had continually reminded her.

"Your youngest daughter is destined for a monster whom neither gods nor men can resist," was the oracle given to the king, and the memory of it began to fill Psyche's heart with fear. Her sisters came to visit her and increased her fear. They asked all manner of questions about Cupid, and Psyche was obliged to confess that she could not exactly describe him because she had never seen him in the light of day. Her jealous sisters began at once to fill Psyche's mind with dark suspicions.

"How do you know," they asked, "that your husband is not a terrible and venomous serpent, who feeds you for a while with all these dainties that he may devour you in the end? Take our advice. Provide yourself with a lamp well filled with oil and tonight, when this villain returns and sleeps, go into his apartment and see whether or not our prophecy is true."

Psyche tried to resist her sisters, but at last their urging and her own curiosity were too much for her. She filled her lamp, and when her husband had fallen into his first sleep, she went silently to his couch and held the light above him.

There lay Cupid, the most beautiful and full of grace of all the gods! His golden ringlets were a crown above his snowy forehead and crimson cheeks, and two wings whose feathers were like the soft white blossoms of the orchard sprang from his shoulders. In her joy at finding no cause for her fears, Psyche leaned over, tipping her lamp, that she might look more closely at Cupid's face. As she bent down, a drop of the burning oil fell on the god's shoulder. He opened his eyes, startled, and looked up at Psyche. Then, without saying a word, he spread his wide wings and flew out of the window.

Psyche tried to follow him, but she had no wings and fell to the ground. For one brief moment Cupid stayed his flight and turned to see her lying there below him in the dust.

"Foolish Psyche," he said, "why did you repay my love in this way? After having disobeyed my mother's commands and made you my wife, could you not trust me? I will inflict no further punishment upon you than this, that I leave you forever, for love cannot live with suspicion." And with these words Cupid flew out of Psyche's sight.

That was the beginning of the long road of trouble Psyche had to follow. She wandered day and night, without food or rest, in search of Cupid. One day she saw a magnificent temple set upon the brow of a lofty hill and she toiled the long way up to it, saying to herself,

"Perhaps my love inhabits here."

When Psyche reached the top of the hill and entered the temple, she saw heaps of corn, some in sheaves and others in loose ears, and there was barley mingled with it. There were sickles and rakes and all the other instruments of the harvest scattered about in great confusion as if the reapers, at the end of the sultry day, had left them in this disorder. In spite of her sorrow, Psyche could not bear to see this disarray and she began trying to set the place in order. She worked so busily that she did not see Ceres, whose temple it was, enter. Turning at last, Psyche saw the goddess of the harvest, wearing her fruit trimmed garments and standing at her side.

"Poor Psyche!" she said pityingly. "But it is possible for you to find a way to the abode of the gods where Cupid has his home. Go and surrender yourself to Venus and try by your own works to win her forgiveness and, perhaps, her favor."

So Psyche obeyed this command of Ceres, although it took a great deal of courage, and she travelled to the temple of Venus in Thebes where the goddess received her in anger.

"The only way by which you can merit the favor of the gods, unfortunate Psyche," she said, "is by your own efforts. I, myself, am going to make a trial of your housewifely skill to see if you are industrious and dilligent."

With these words Venus conducted Psyche to a storehouse connected with her temple where there was an enormous quantity of grain laid up; beans, lentils, barley, wheat and the tiny seeds of the millet which Venus had stored to feed her pigeons.

"Separate all these grains," the goddess said to Psyche, "putting those of the same kind in a pile, and see that you finish before evening." Then she left Psyche who was in consternation at the impossible task spread before her.

Psyche dipped her fingers into the golden heap gathering up a handful to sort the grains, but it took her a long time and the grain lay about her on every side like a yellow river. The grains she held were less than a drop taken from its surface.

"I shall not be able to finish. I shall never see my husband again!" Psyche moaned.

Still she worked on steadily and at last a little ant, a native of the fields, crawled across the floor and took compassion on the toiling Psyche. It was a king in its own domain and was followed by a host of its little red subjects. Grain by grain, they separated the seeds, helping to put them in their own piles, and when the work was accomplished they vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

When evening came Venus returned, breathing odors of nectar and crowned with roses, from a banquet of the gods. When she saw that Psyche's task was done, she scarcely believed her eyes.

"You must have had assistance," she said. "To-morrow you shall try a more difficult undertaking. Beyond my temple you will see a grassy meadow which stretches along the borders of the water. There you will find a flock of sheep with golden shining fleeces on their backs and grazing without a shepherd. Bring me a sample of their precious wool that you gather from each of the fleeces."

Psyche once more obeyed, but this was a test of her life as well as of her endurance. As she reached the meadow, the river god, whispering to her through the rushes, warned her.

"Do not venture among the flock while the sun shines on them," he told her. "In the heat of the rising sun, the rams burn with a cruel rage to destroy mortals with their sharp teeth. Wait until twilight, when you will find their woolly gold sticking to the bushes and the trunks of the trees."

The compassion of the river god helped Psyche to do as Venus had commanded her and she returned to the temple in the evening with her arms full of golden fleece.

Still Venus was not satisfied.

"I have a third task for you," she told the weary Psyche. "Take this box to the realm of Pluto and give it to Proserpine saying to her, 'My mistress, Venus, desires you to send her a little of your beauty, for in tending her son whom Psyche burned she has lost some of her own.' And make all possible haste, for I must use it before I appear next in the circle of the gods on Mount Olympus."

Psyche felt that now her destruction was surely at hand. It was a dangerous road that led to the dark, underground kingdom of Pluto and there were deadly dangers on the way. But Psyche was finding a new courage with each of the difficulties that she had to encounter, and she set out with the box. She passed safely by Cerberus, Pluto's three headed watch dog. She prevailed upon Charon, the ferryman, to take her across the black river and wait for her while she begged Proserpine to fill the box. Then she started back to the light again.

All would have gone well with Psyche if she had not grown curious. That was why her road to the dwelling place of the gods was so long and difficult. Psyche was always mixing up a little bit of earth with her good intentions. Having come so far successfully with her dangerous task, she wanted to open the box.

"I would take only the least bit of this beauty from Venus," Psyche thought, "to make myself more fair for Cupid if I ever behold him again."

So she carefully opened the box, but there was nothing in it of beauty at all. It was a potion that caused Psyche to fall beside the road in a sleep which seemed to have no waking. She did not stir, or breathe, or remember.

It was there that love, in the form of Cupid found Psyche. He was healed of his wound, and he could not bear her absence any longer. He flew through a crack in the window of the palace of Venus and made his way to earth and straight to the spot where Psyche lay. He gathered the deadly sleep from her body and put it fast inside the box again. Then he touched her lightly with one of his arrows and she woke.

"Again you have almost perished because of your curiosity," he said as Psyche reached up her arms to him "but perform exactly this task which my mother asked of you and I will attend to the rest."

Then Cupid, as swift as a bird flies, returned to Mount Olympus and pleaded with Jupiter for a welcome for Psyche. Jupiter consented at last to have this daughter of earth admitted to the family of the gods and Mercury was sent to bring her and offer her the cup of ambrosial nectar that would make her one of the immortals.

It is said that at the moment when Psyche completed her tasks and took her departure for Mount Olympus a winged creature, the butterfly, that had never been seen before on earth, arose from a garden and flew on golden wings up toward the sun. So it was thought that the story of Psyche was the story of the butterfly who bursts its gray house of the cocoon and rises, with a new beauty and the power of wings, toward the sky. And the Greeks had still another name for Psyche whom neither her troubles or the sleep of Pluto could keep from the abode of the gods when Love pleaded for her. They spoke of her as the Soul.

HOW MELAMPOS FED THE SERPENT.

There was a hollow oak tree in front of the house of Melampos in Greece and inside it was a nest of serpents.

Melampos was a farmer, skilful in raising fruits and grains and full of love for everything that lived out of doors. He would not so much as crush an ant hurrying home to its hill with a grain of sand, and although he did not particularly like snakes he saw no harm in these that had made themselves a home in a tree that no one wanted.

"They will do us no hurt unless we disturb them," Melampos told his servants. "Let them alone and perhaps, when the weather is warmer, they will take their way off to the neighboring marsh."

But Melampos' servants were not so sure as he of the harmlessness of the serpents.

"Our master is growing old and child like," they said to each other. "The next time he drives to the city with a load of grain we will get rid of the nest of vipers."

So that was what they did. In Melampos' absence they fired the nest of the serpents with a torch and burned it up completely, as they thought. But when Melampos returned that afternoon and sat down under his arbor to rest and eat his supper of bread and grapes, he saw a pair of bright black eyes peering up at him from the grass. Then he spied a round green head raised above a long green body. It was one of the young serpents that had not been hurt when the nest was burned and had come to the master of the place for protection.

Melampos looked cautiously around to see that no one was watching him.

"If any of the servants see me, they will think me out of my senses," he said to himself, "but I am sorry for this little creature and would befriend it." Then, seeing that he was quite unobserved, Melampos broke off a piece of his bread and threw the crumbs to the young serpent. It devoured them to the last one and then glided off so silently that it left no trail except a long line of gently moving grasses.

The next day the serpent came and the next, always hungry and always lifting its little head and looking at Melampos in its odd, bright way. One day as Melampos broke his bread as usual to share it with the serpent, he heard a voice speaking to him.

"The gods have been watching your kindness, Melampos," it said, "and have rewarded you in the way you will like best. They have given you the power of understanding the tongues of the wild."

Melampos looked all about him, but there was not another mortal within sight. Then his eyes caught those of the serpent and he suddenly realized that it had been its voice which he had heard. That was the beginning of strange experiences for Melampos upon whom the gods had conferred so wonderful a gift.

The serpent never returned after that day, but that very same evening a tree toad spoke to Melampos.

"Water your olive trees well around the roots, Melampos," it said, "for there is a season of drought approaching."

That was an excellent warning, because the farmer had a grove of young trees that needed very tender care. Melampos sprayed the trees and soaked the roots and felt very thankful to the tree toad for its advice.

After a few days of dry weather Melampos was on his way to the city when a grasshopper spoke to him from the side of the road.

"Turn back, Melampos, and gather your sheaves of wheat into your storehouse," the grasshopper said, "for Jupiter is about to send a thunderbolt down to the earth."

That was exactly what happened. Melampos had just time to reach his grain field and order his men to put the ripe sheaves safely under cover when the sky grew black and the thunder rolled along the mountain tops. A high wind blew and the rain was heavy, but Melampos had saved his harvest.

All outdoors talked to Melampos after that, and it was very pleasant indeed, for he had no boys and girls of his own to keep him company. If he sat down to rest on a bank of moss in the forest, he was at once surrounded by friends. A little wild bee would light on a branch in front of him and tell him where he might find its sweet comb dripping with honey nearby. A butterfly would poise on his rough, soil stained hand and tell him where he would be able to see a bed of yellow daffodils beside a brook. Or a bird in a nearby bush would sing to him of the gay doings of Pan and the dryads and tell him the road to take to their haunts farther and deeper in the woods.

Melampos had never had such a good time in his life. He was an excellent husbandman and managed to make his farm pay well every year, but he cared very much more for this friendship of outdoors than he did for the hoards of food each harvest gave him. And, more and more, he came to stay in the woods and fields, holding conversation with the insects and the wild animals.

One harvest season Melampos was returning from the market with a large purse of gold pieces that had just been paid him for the sale of his summer wheat. He was taking his way through a deserted path of the forest where he hoped he might hear the echo, at least, of the merry pipes of Pan. He had not a thought or care in the world when, in an instant, he was laid low on the ground from a blow on his head, his gold was snatched away from him, and he was bound so tightly that he could not move. Melampos had been set upon by a band of robbers who threw him over the back of a horse and made off with him into the recesses of the forest.

It was not that peaceful, sylvan grove of the forest that Pan and his friends inhabited, but a dark, gloomy part where it was so still that even the sound of a twig falling to the ground seemed as loud as the splintering of an arrow, and no one ever passed by. The robbers put Melampos in an underground passage of a prison-like fortress which they had built for themselves. From beam to floor the fortress was built all of oak planks so old and thick and so completely covered with ivy on the outside that it looked like part of the forest itself.

Melampos had only a slit in the wall for a window, and he never saw his captors save when they tossed him some dried crusts once a day. He could hear them, though, counting their stolen coin and rattling it about. Then he heard the sound of clinking armor and the occasional clashing of swords.

"They are planning to kill me," he thought.

He looked longingly at the narrow chink in his prison wall, hardly large enough to let a sunbeam through.

"If I could but beckon to a wood pigeon and tell it my plight, I should be able to send a message to my friends by it," he sighed, "or I could ask the woodpecker who can bore through wood to try and widen my window so that I might escape."

Just then Melampos heard a rustling sound in the heavy beam of the ceiling of the room where he was imprisoned and then a small voice spoke to him.

"We could teach you better than any other creatures how to escape," it said. "For years this forest has belonged to us, small as we are, and in a very short time now it will return to the earth from which the trees that built it came."

Melampos was amazed. He looked in all the corners of the room but could see no one. Then the voice went on.

"No wood, or men who live in shelters made of wood are safe from us. We have bored the beams and timbers of this fortress in a thousand places until they are hollow and ready to fall."

Suddenly Melampos discovered the source of the voice. Through a knothole in a beam above his head a wood worm peered down at him. With its companions it had eaten the planks that made the fortress until it was no safer than a house of paper.

"We are all doomed," Melampos told one of the robbers who brought him his food that night.

"Doomed; what do you mean by that?" the robber asked in terror, for like most of his kind he was nothing but a coward at heart.

Melampos showed him the decayed wood, hollow, and riddled with holes, and the man called his companions to see their danger. They decided that they must flee from the fortress at once, and they decided to give Melampos his freedom. It would not have been safe to stay in the fortress another season, for almost as soon as the winter storms came it crumbled like a house of sand, and the ants and the crickets used it to make themselves winter shelters.

Melampos went back to his farm and the pleasant conversation of the insects, the birds, and his four-footed friends. He was the first mortal to have such friends, but there were others who followed him and found happiness, also, through being kind to little wild creatures.

HOW A HUNTRESS BECAME A BEAR.

Although Juno was the queen of the gods she had a failing that is common to mortals. She was very jealous, and particularly of any maiden of Earth whom she fancied might sometime be given a place by Jupiter among the great family of the gods on Mount Olympus. As soon as Juno saw Callisto, a beautiful huntress of the forests of Arcadia, she disliked her.

Perhaps Juno would have liked to be free to roam through the woods where Pan played his music for dancing and the Dryads sported from one season to another as Callisto did. The goddess may have envied the huntress her happy, free life with no royal duties to interfere with her daily chase of the deer or any heavy crown to keep the breezes from tossing her long dark hair. Callisto reverenced Jupiter and Juno alike, with no thought that she might be arousing the displeasure of the goddess, but one day a strange and fearful thing happened to her.

She had just raised her bow to her shoulder ready to shoot an arrow as straight as a dart through the green path of the forest when it suddenly struck her hand and she fell to the moss upon her hands and knees. She tried to reach out her arms in supplication but they had become thick and heavy and were covered with long black hair. Her hands grew rounded, were armed with crooked claws and served her for feet. Her voice, which had been so sweet that it charmed the birds when she called to them, changed to a terrifying growl.

Callisto raised herself as well as she could, lifting up her paws to beg mercy of the gods and uttering frightful roars as she bemoaned her fate. She had always been obliged to defend herself from the lions and wolves that haunted the forest and she felt that she would be at their mercy now. All at once, though, she understood what had happened to her. She, herself, was now no longer a mortal but a wild beast. Juno had persuaded Jupiter to change Callisto to the first bear.

She had never liked to be out in the wood at night, but now she had no shelter and had to roam through the darkness, pursued often by the same wild beasts whom it had been her custom to hunt before. She fled from her own dogs in terror and was in hourly terror of the same arrows which she had formerly aimed so straight. In the winter Callisto crawled into some hollow log or dug a cave for herself that she might keep alive during the season of the North Wind's reign, and when spring came she crawled out, lean and weak, to search for the wild bee's comb and the first juicy berries of the juniper.

One day a boy saw the bear as he was out hunting. Callisto saw him at the same time and realized that he was her own son, Arcas, now grown to be a tall youth and taking his part in the chase as his mother had so many seasons before. Callisto forgot her changed form in her great joy at seeing her son, and she arose to her hind feet and hastened toward him holding out her paws to embrace him. The boy, alarmed, raised his hunting spear and ran to meet the bear and thrust its point through her heart. Callisto's son would have killed her if Jupiter had not, just then, looked down on the forest from his throne and felt a sudden pity for the tragedy he had brought about.

The gods had made a long road in the sky that led to the palace of the Sun. Any one may see this road on a clear night, for it stretches across the face of the sky and is known as the Milky Way. The palaces of the illustrious gods stood on either side of the road and a little farther back were placed the homes of the lesser deities.

At the very moment that Arcas, his spear raised, rushed upon Callisto, two new comers appeared in the sky near the road of the gods. They had the form of a Great Bear and a Little Bear, but their bodies were made of brightly shining stars. The mighty Jupiter had transformed Callisto and her son into these two constellations.

How enraged Juno was when she found it out! She descended to the sea and told her troubles to Oceanus, a giant of the race of Titans who ruled the waters at that time.

"Do you wonder, Oceanus," Juno cried, "why I, the queen of the gods, have left the heavenly plains and seek your depths? It is because my authority has been set aside. I shall be supplanted among my fellow gods, for Callisto, the bear, has been taken up to the skies and given a place among the stars. Who can deny but that she may not occupy my throne next!"

"What would you have me do about it?" old Oceanus asked, a little puzzled as to why Juno had consulted him.

"I forbade Callisto to keep her human form and my will has been unjustly set aside," Juno replied. "Now that she has an abode on the road to heaven she will be able to take any form she desires and may come to you for help in her attempt to steal my throne. I command you to never allow the stars of her constellation to touch the waters."

Oceanus called a council of the other powers of the waters and they assented to Juno's decree. One after another the stars rose and set, touching the sea in their courses, but the Great Bear and the Little Bear moved ceaselessly round and round in the sky, never sinking to rest as the other stars did beneath the ocean. Juno had thought that this would be a punishment for them but as it turned out it was a kind of reward.

Because the Great Bear and the Little Bear were always to be seen in their changeless, shining course, people who were obliged to travel at night, and particularly those who were at sea, grew to depend upon them as a means of finding their way in the darkness. The last star in the tail of the Little Bear indicated the north and was known after a while as the Pole Star. The ancients called it also the Star of Arcadia, for it helped so many mariners to find their way home across the perilous waters.

It had happened to Juno, as it often happens to jealous people to-day, that she had not hurt Callisto in the least but had brought her a great deal of honor.

THE ADVENTURE OF GLAUCUS.

Glaucus, the fisherman, rubbed his eyes to find out if he was not dreaming. He had just drawn in his net to land and had emptied it, ready to sort the fish that lay, a large haul, all over the grass. But a strange thing was happening to them. Of a sudden, the fishes began to revive and move their fins exactly as if they were in the water. Then, as Glaucus looked at them in astonishment, the fishes one and all moved off to the water, plunged in, and swam away.

The spot where Glaucus fished was a beautiful island in the river, but a solitary place, for it was inhabited only by him. It was not used to pasture cattle even, or visited by anyone. No one was there to work sorcery with his haul. Glaucus did not know what to make of the happening.

"Can it be that the river-god is working this marvel?" he wondered to himself. Then it occurred to him that there might be some secret power in the thick green leaves that covered the island among the grasses.

"What may not be the power of this herb?" he asked himself, pulling up a handful of the leaves and tasting one.

Scarcely had the juices of the plant touched Glaucus' tongue than a strange feeling of restlessness filled him, and he was overcome by an unconquerable thirst. He could not keep away from the water but ran to the edge of the river where he had fished for so many years, plunged in and swam away toward the sea.

It was a wonderful, free kind of experience for Glaucus who had never known any life but that of hauling in his nets and then casting them again. As he followed the swiftly flowing currents, the waters of a hundred rivers flowed over him, washing away all that was mortal of the fisherman, and he came at last to the sea. A marvellous sight met him there. The surf that beat against a rocky shore became suddenly smooth, as a chariot drawn by horses shod with brass and having long floating manes of gold rolled toward Glaucus over the surface of the sea. A giant who held a three-pointed spear for crushing rocks and blew loud trumpet blasts from a great curved shell, drove the chariot toward Glaucus and then stopped, inviting him to ride down to the depths of the ocean.

It was Neptune, the god of the sea, and Glaucus discovered that he felt quite at home in the chariot. He was no longer a dweller of the earth, but had become a citizen of that boundless country that lay beneath the waves. The fisherman was completely changed in form. His hair was sea green and trailed behind him through the water. His shoulders broadened, and his limbs took the shape and use of a fish's tail. He had never known such freedom and joy as now when he spent whole days doing nothing but following the ebb and flow of the tides and learning the use of his newly found fins as a bird tries its wings on first leaving the nest.

But Glaucus still retained powers of thinking and of action which are denied the inhabitants of the sea. One day he saw the beautiful maiden, Scylla, one of the water nymphs, come out from a sheltered nook on the shore and seat herself on a rock, dipping her hands in the water and bringing up sea-shells for twining in the water weeds to make a necklace. Glaucus had never seen so fair a creature as Scylla and he moved toward her through the waves, rising at last and stopping at the place where she sat as he murmured his affection for her above the singing of the sea.

But Scylla was very much terrified at the sight of this strange personage, half youth and half fish. She turned to run as soon as she saw him and did not stop until she had gained a cliff that overlooked the sea. Here she waited for a moment and turned around to look in wonder as Glaucus raised himself upon a rock and the sun touched his green hair and scaly covering until he shone in its light. He called to Scylla.

"Do not flee from me, maiden! I am no monster or even a sea-animal, but have been transformed from a poor fisherman to a god of the sea." Then Glaucus told Scylla the whole story of his amazing adventures and tried to describe to her the kingdom of Neptune with its playing dolphins, the castles of rose colored and white coral, and the never ending music of the waters.

"Come with me, and descend to Neptune's realm," he begged, but Scylla would not remain to even listen. She fled and left nothing to console Glaucus but her scattered sea shells lying in bright heaps on the rocks.