ground looking like a mere club or stick. This plant
took pity on the maiden. It began at once to send out long feathery
branches with delicate green leaves, which grew so fast that Perigune
was soon hidden from sight beneath them. Theseus knew that she must be
somewhere in the garden, but he could not find her, so well did the
feathery branches conceal her. So he called to her:
"Perigune," he said, "you need not fear me; for I know that you are
gentle and good, and it is only against things dark and cruel that I
lift up my hand."
The maiden peeped from her hiding-place, and when she saw the fair face
of the youth and heard his kind voice, she came out, trembling, and
talked with him. And Theseus rested that evening in her house, and she
picked some of her choicest flowers for him and gave him food. But when
in the morning the dawn began to appear in the east, and the stars grew
dim above the mountain peaks, he bade her farewell and journeyed onward
over the hills. And Perigune tended her plants and watched her flowers
in the lone garden in the midst of the piny grove; but she never plucked
the stalks of asparagus nor used them for food, and when she afterwards
became the wife of a hero and had children and grandchildren and
great-grandchildren, she taught them all to spare the plant which had
taken pity upon her in her need.
The road which Theseus followed now led him closer to the shore, and by
and by he came to a place where the mountains seemed to rise sheer out
of the sea, and there was only a, narrow path high up along the side of
the cliff. Far down beneath his feet he could hear the waves dashing
evermore against the rocky wall, while above him the mountain eagles
circled and screamed, and gray crags and barren peaks glistened in the
sunlight.
But Theseus went on fearlessly and came at last to a place where a
spring of clear water bubbled out from a cleft in the rock; and there
the path was narrower still, and the low doorway of a cavern opened out
upon it. Close by the spring sat a red-faced giant, with a huge club
across his knees, guarding the road so that no one could pass; and in
the sea at the foot of the cliff basked a huge turtle, its leaden eyes
looking always upward for its food. Theseus knew--for Perigune had told
him--that this was the dwelling-place of a robber named Sciron, who was
the terror of all the coast, and whose custom it was to make strangers
wash his feet, so that while they were
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