ng to find out when,
and how, and for what they were made."

"Well, well, well, well, Cousin Eustace!" cried all the children at
once; "talk no more about your stories, but begin."

"Sit down, then, every soul of you," said Eustace Bright, "and be all
as still as so many mice. At the slightest interruption, whether from
great, naughty Primrose, little Dandelion, or any other, I shall bite
the story short off between my teeth, and swallow the untold part.
But, in the first place, do any of you know what a Gorgon is?"

"I do," said Primrose.

"Then hold your tongue!" rejoined Eustace, who had rather she would
have known nothing about the matter. "Hold all your tongues, and I
shall tell you a sweet pretty story of a Gorgon's head."

And so he did, as you may begin to read on the next page. Working up
his sophomorical erudition with a good deal of tact, and incurring
great obligations to Professor Anthon, he, nevertheless, disregarded
all classical authorities, whenever the vagrant audacity of his
imagination impelled him to do so.

THE GORGON'S HEAD

[Illustration]

Perseus was the son of Danae, who was the daughter of a king. And when
Perseus was a very little boy, some wicked people put his mother and
himself into a chest, and set them afloat upon the sea. The wind blew
freshly, and drove the chest away from the shore, and the uneasy
billows tossed it up and down; while Danae clasped her child closely
to her bosom, and dreaded that some big wave would dash its foamy
crest over them both. The chest sailed on, however, and neither sank
nor was upset; until, when night was coming, it floated so near an
island that it got entangled in a fisherman's nets, and was drawn out
high and dry upon the sand. The island was called Seriphus, and it was
reigned over by King Polydectes, who happened to be the fisherman's
brother.

This fisherman, I am glad to tell you, was an exceedingly humane and
upright man. He showed great kindness to Danae and her little boy;
and continued to befriend them, until Perseus had grown to be a
handsome youth, very strong and active, and skillful in the use of
arms. Long before this time, King Polydectes had seen the two
strangers--the mother and her child--who had come to his dominions in
a floating chest. As he was not good and kind, like his brother the
fisherman, but extremely wicked, he resolved to send Perseus on a
dangerous enterprise, in which he would probably be killed, and t