rmer governor, Don Sancho Panza, but which is now known
by all to be connected with the mainland. Pleasant pastures slope down
to the water, and if we were closer in shore you might chance to see
Rozinante, the famous charger of Don Quixote de la Mancha, grazing
amicably with the horse that brought the good news from Ghent to Aix."

"I wish I could see them!" I cried, enthusiastically; "but there is
another horse I would rather behold than any--the winged steed
Pegasus."

Before responding, my guide raised his hand and shaded his eyes and
scanned the horizon.

"No," he said at last. "I cannot descry any this afternoon. Sometimes
in these latitudes I have seen a dozen hippogriffs circling about the
ship, and I should like to have shown them to you. Perhaps they are all
in the paddock at the stock-farm, where Apollo is now mating them with
night-mares in the hope of improving the breed from which he selects
the coursers that draw the chariot of the sun. They say that the
experiment would have more chance of success if it were easier to find
the night-mares' nests."

"It was not a hippogriff I desired to see especially," I returned when
he paused, "although that would be interesting, no doubt. It was the
renowned Pegasus himself."

"Pegasus is much like the other hippogriffs," he retorted, "although
perhaps he has a little better record than any of them. But they say he
has not won a single aerial handicap since that American professor of
yours harnessed him to a one-hoss shay. That seemed to break his
spirit, somehow; and I'm told he would shy now even at a broomstick
train."

"Even if he is out of condition," I declared, "Pegasus is still the
steed I desire to see above all."

"I haven't set eyes on him for weeks," was the answer, "so he is
probably moulting; this is the time of year. He has a roomy boxstall in
the new Augean stable at the foot of Mount Parnassus. You know they
have turned the spring of Castaly so that it flows through the
stable-yard now, and so it is easy enough to keep the place clean."

"If I may not see Pegasus," I asked, "is there any chance of my being
taken to the Castle of the Sleeping Beauty?"

"I have never seen it myself," he replied, "and so I cannot show it to
you. Rarely indeed may I leave the deck of my ship to go ashore; and
this castle that you ask about is very far inland. I am told that it is
in a country which the French travellers call _La Scribie_, a curious
land, where