STORIES OF CLASSIC MYTHS

Beauteous beings from the fable-land! Whilst your blissful worship smiled around,

Ah, how different was it in that day! When the people still thy temples crowned, Venus Amathusia!

There, where now, as we 're by sages told,
Whirls on high a soulless fiery ball,
Helios guided then his car of gold,

In his silent majesty, o'er all.

Oreads then these heights around us filled;

Then a dryad dwelt in yonder tree,

From the urn of loving naiads rilled

Silver streamlets foamingly.

Beauteous world, where art thou gone? O, thou,
Nature's blooming youth, return once more!

Ah, but in song's fairy region now

Lives thy fabled trace so dear of yore!

Cold and perished, sorrow now the plains,

Not one godhead greets my longing sight; Ah, the shadow only now remains

Of your living image bright!

Schiller.

(Tr. E. A. Bowring.)

This is the story of the Fleece of Gold, and of the Golden Ram, and what he did, and where he died, and how a Dragon guarded his Fleece, and who the man was that won it, and of all that befell him on his way to find the Fleece, and on his way home. Because it is a long story, it is divided into parts. And the first part is the tale of "The Children of the Cloud."

I

NCE upon a time there was a king called

ONCE

Athamas, who reigned in a country beside the Grecian sea. Now, Athamas was a young man, and unmarried, because none of the Princesses who then lived seemed to him beauti

ful enough to be his wife. One day he left his palace, and climbed high up into a mountain, following the course of a little river. Now, a great black rock stood on one side of the river, and made a corner, round which the water flowed deep and dark. Yet through the noise of the river, the king thought he heard laughter and voices like the voices of girls. So he climbed very quietly up the rock, and, looking over the edge, there he saw three beautiful maidens bathing in a pool, and splashing each other with the water. Their long yellow hair covered them like cloaks and floated behind them on the pool. One of them was even more beautiful than the others, and as soon as he saw her the king fell in love with her, and said to himself, "This is the wife for me."

Now, as he thought this, his arm touched a stone, which slipped from the top of the rock where he lay, and went leaping, faster and faster as it fell, till it dropped with a splash into the pool below. Then the three maidens heard it, and were frightened, thinking some one was near. So they rushed out of the pool to the grassy bank where their clothes lay, lovely soft clothes, white, and gray, and rosy-colored, all shining with pearl drops, and diamonds like

dew. In a moment they had dressed, and then it was as if they had wings, for they rose gently from the ground, and floated softly up and up the windings of the brook. Here and there among the green tops of the mountain-ash trees the king could just see the white robes shining, and disappearing, and shining again, till they rose far off like a mist, and so up, and up into the sky, and at last he only followed them with his eyes, as they floated like clouds among the other clouds across the blue. All day he watched them, and at sunset he saw them sink, golden and rose-colored, and purple, and go down into the dark with the setting sun. Now, the king went home to his palace, but he was very unhappy and nothing gave him any pleasure. All day he roamed about among the hills, and looked for the beautiful girls, but he never found them. And all night he dreamed about them, till he grew thin and pale and was like to die.

Now, the way with sick men then was that they made a pilgrimage to the temple of a god (for they were heathen people, worshiping many gods), and in the temple they offered sacrifices. Then they hoped that the god would appear to them in a dream, and tell them how they might be made well again. So the king drove in his