t her fingers' ends.
In short, she is so immoderately wise that many people call her wisdom
personified. But, to tell you the truth, she has hardly vivacity
enough for my taste; and I think you would scarcely find her so
pleasant a traveling companion as myself. She has her good points,
nevertheless; and you will find the benefit of them, in your encounter
with the Gorgons."

By this time it had grown quite dusk. They were now come to a very
wild and desert place, overgrown with shaggy bushes, and so silent and
solitary that nobody seemed ever to have dwelt or journeyed there. All
was waste and desolate, in the gray twilight, which grew every moment
more obscure. Perseus looked about him, rather disconsolately, and
asked Quicksilver whether they had a great deal farther to go.

"Hist! hist!" whispered his companion. "Make no noise! This is just
the time and place to meet the Three Gray Women. Be careful that they
do not see you before you see them; for, though they have but a single
eye among the three, it is as sharp-sighted as half a dozen common
eyes."

"But what must I do," asked Perseus, "when we meet them?"

Quicksilver explained to Perseus how the Three Gray Women managed with
their one eye. They were in the habit, it seems, of changing it from
one to another, as if it had been a pair of spectacles, or--which
would have suited them better--a quizzing-glass. When one of the three
had kept the eye a certain time, she took it out of the socket and
passed it to one of her sisters, whose turn it might happen to be, and
who immediately clapped it into her own head, and enjoyed a peep at
the visible world. Thus it will easily be understood that only one of
the Three Gray Women could see, while the other two were in utter
darkness; and, moreover, at the instant when the eye was passing from
hand to hand, neither of the poor old ladies was able to see a wink. I
have heard of a great many strange things, in my day, and have
witnessed not a few; but none, it seems to me, that can compare with
the oddity of these Three Gray Women, all peeping through a single
eye.

So thought Perseus, likewise, and was so astonished that he almost
fancied his companion was joking with him, and that there were no such
old women in the world.

"You will soon find whether I tell the truth or no," observed
Quicksilver. "Hark! hush! hist! hist! There they come, now!"

Perseus looked earnestly through the dusk of the evening, and there,