lucid pool. The water-lilies
and blue forget-me-nots were trodden down, the fish that had their
homes under the mossy stones in terror fled away. Only the mud came
up, filthy, defiling, and the rustics laughed in loud and foolish
laughter to see the havoc they had wrought.

The goddess Latona rose from her knees. No longer did she seem a mere
woman, very weary, hungry and athirst, travelled over far. In their
surprised eyes she grew to a stature that was as that of the deathless
gods. And her eyes were dark as an angry sea at even.

"Shameless ones!" she said, in a voice as the voice of a storm that
sweeps destroyingly over forest and mountain. "Ah! shameless ones! Is
it thus that thou wouldst defy one who has dwelt on Olympus? Behold
from henceforth shalt thou have thy dwelling in the mud of the
green-scummed pools, thy homes in the water that thy flat feet have
defiled."

As she spoke, a change, strange and terrible, passed over the forms of
the trampling peasants. Their stature shrank. They grew squat and fat.
Their hands and feet were webbed, and their grinning mouths became
great, sad, gaping openings by which to swallow worms and flies. Green
and yellow and brown were their skins, and when they would fain have
cried aloud for mercy, from their throats there would come only the
"_Krroak! krroak! krroak!_" that we know so well.

And when, that night, the goddess of darkness was wrapped in peace in
the black, silver star bespangled robe that none could take from her,
there arose from the pond over which the grey willows hung, weeping,
the clamour of a great lamentation. Yet no piteous words were there,
only the incessant, harsh complaint of the frogs that we hear in the
marshes.

From that time the world went well with Latona. Down to the seashore
she came, and when she held out her arms in longing appeal to the
AEgean islands that lay like purple flowers strewn, far apart, on a
soft carpet of limpid blue, Zeus heard her prayer. He asked Poseidon
to send a dolphin to carry the woman he loved to the floating island
of Delos, and when she had been borne there in safety, he chained the
island with chains of adamant to the golden-sanded floor of the sea.

And on this sanctuary there were born to Latona twin children,
thereafter to be amongst the most famed of the deathless gods--the
god and goddess, Apollo and Diana.

"... Those hinds that were transformed to frogs
Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny,