gods and also committed other great crimes. For this he was
"tantalized" with food and drink, which, seeming always to be within
his reach, ever mocked his hopes by eluding his grasp.

The groans of a crowd of disheveled women next attracted the
affrighted attention of Hercules. They were forty-nine of the fifty
daughters of Danaus, King of Argos, who, at the instigation of their
father, had killed their husbands because Danaus thought they were
conspiring to depose him.

One only of the fifty, to wit Hypermnestra, had the courage to disobey
this unlawful command and so saved the life of Lynceus, her husband,
with whom she fled. Later on Lynceus returned and slew the cruel King
in battle.

To punish the forty-nine Danaides, Jupiter cast them into the outer
darkness of Black Tartarus, where they were ever engaged in the
hopeless task of pouring water into a sieve. Hypermnestra, on the
contrary, was honored while alive, and also after her death, for
loving goodness even more than she loved her father.

Glutted with horror Hercules at length quitted gloomy Tartarus and
beheld in front of him still another river. This was Lethe. Whoso
drank the waters of this river, which separated the place of torment
from the abode of the blest, lost memory of all that had been
aforetime in his mind, and so was no longer troubled by even the
remembrance of human misery.

Across Lethe stretched the Elysian Fields where the shades of the
blest dwelt in bliss without alloy. An enchanting greenness made the
sweet-smelling groves as pleasant to the eye as they were to the sense
of smell. Sunlit, yet never parched with torrid heat, everywhere their
verdure charmed the delighted eye, and all things conspired to make
the shades of the good and wise, who were privileged to dwell in these
Elysian Fields, delightfully happy.

Hercules saw, in these shady regions of the blest, a crowd of kings,
heroes and men and women of lower degree who, while on earth, had
loved and served their fellow men.

Having at length found and released Theseus, Hercules set out with him
for the upper world. The two left Hades by an ivory door, the key of
which Pluto had confided to their care.

What awesome tales they had to recount to their wondering friends of
the marvels of Black Tartarus and of Radiant Elysium!

IV

THE TUNIC OF NESSUS THE CENTAUR

There abode in Thessaly, in the days of Hercules, a strange race of
men who had the head and arms