ur mother,
beholding you safe and sound, will shed tears of joy; and what can she
do more, should you win ever so great a victory? No matter for the
golden apples! No matter for the king, your cruel cousin! We do not
wish the dragon with the hundred heads to eat you up!"

[Illustration: HERCVLES & THE NYMPHS]

The stranger seemed to grow impatient at these remonstrances. He
carelessly lifted his mighty club, and let it fall upon a rock that
lay half buried in the earth, near by. With the force of that idle
blow, the great rock was shattered all to pieces. It cost the stranger
no more effort to achieve this feat of a giant's strength than for one
of the young maidens to touch her sister's rosy cheek with a flower.

"Do you not believe," said he, looking at the damsels with a smile,
"that such a blow would have crushed one of the dragon's hundred
heads?"

Then he sat down on the grass, and told them the story of his life, or
as much of it as he could remember, from the day when he was first
cradled in a warrior's brazen shield. While he lay there, two immense
serpents came gliding over the floor, and opened their hideous jaws to
devour him; and he, a baby of a few months old, had griped one of the
fierce snakes in each of his little fists, and strangled them to
death. When he was but a stripling, he had killed a huge lion, almost
as big as the one whose vast and shaggy hide he now wore upon his
shoulders. The next thing that he had done was to fight a battle with
an ugly sort of monster, called a hydra, which had no less than nine
heads, and exceedingly sharp teeth in every one.

"But the dragon of the Hesperides, you know," observed one of the
damsels, "has a hundred heads!"

"Nevertheless," replied the stranger, "I would rather fight two such
dragons than a single hydra. For, as fast as I cut off a head, two
others grew in its place; and, besides, there was one of the heads
that could not possibly be killed, but kept biting as fiercely as
ever, long after it was cut off. So I was forced to bury it under a
stone, where it is doubtless alive to this very day. But the hydra's
body, and its eight other heads, will never do any further mischief."

The damsels, judging that the story was likely to last a good while,
had been preparing a repast of bread and grapes, that the stranger
might refresh himself in the intervals of his talk. They took pleasure
in helping him to this simple food; and, now and then, one of them