brought it home. Give us news of our fathers and
mothers, if any of them be left alive on earth."

Then there was shouting and laughing and weeping, and all the kings
came to the shore, and they led away the heroes to their homes, and
bewailed the valiant dead.

And Jason went up with Medeia to the palace of his uncle Pelias. And
when he came in, Pelias and AEson, Jason's father, sat by the fire, two
old men, whose heads shook together as they tried to warm themselves
before the fire.

Jason fell down at his father's knee and wept and said, "I am your own
son Jason, and I have brought home the Golden Fleece and a Princess of
the Sun's race for my bride."

Then his father clung to him like a child, and wept, and would not let
him go, and cried, "Promise never to leave me till I die."

And Jason turned to his uncle Pelias, "Now give me up the kingdom and
fulfil your promise, as I have fulfilled mine." And his uncle gave him
his kingdom.

So Jason stayed at Iolcos by the sea.

THESEUS

ADAPTED BY MARY MACGREGOR

I

HOW THESEUS LIFTED THE STONE

Once upon a time there was a Princess called Aithra. She had one fair
son named Theseus, the bravest lad in all the land. And Aithra never
smiled but when she looked at him, for her husband had forgotten her,
and lived far away.

Aithra used to go up to the temple of the gods, and sit there all day,
looking out across the bay, over the purple peaks of the mountains to
the Attic shore beyond.

When Theseus was full fifteen years old, she took him up with her to
the temple, and into the thickets which grew in the temple yard. She
led him to a tall plane-tree, and there she sighed and said, "Theseus,
my son, go into that thicket and you will find at the plane-tree foot
a great flat stone. Lift it, and bring me what lies underneath."

Then Theseus pushed his way in through the thick bushes, and searching
among their roots he found a great flat stone, all overgrown with ivy
and moss.

He tried to lift it, but he could not. And he tried till the sweat ran
down his brow from the heat, and the tears from his eyes for shame,
but all was of no avail. And at last he came back to his mother and
said, "I have found the stone, but I cannot lift it, nor do I think
that any man could, in all the land."

Then she sighed and said, "The day may come when you will be a
stronger man than lives in all the land." And she took him by the hand
and went into the temple a