particularly at
his feet, one of which, you remember, was bare, while the other was
decorated with his father's golden-stringed sandal.

"Look at him! only look at him!" said the man to his next neighbor. "Do
you see? He wears but one sandal!"

Upon this, first one person, and then another, began to stare at Jason,
and everybody seemed to be greatly struck with something in his aspect;
though they turned their eyes much oftener towards his feet than to any
other part of his figure. Besides, he could hear them whispering to one
another.

"One sandal! One sandal!" they kept saying. "The man with one sandal!
Here he is at last! Whence has he come? What does he mean to do? What
will the king say to the one-sandaled man?"

Poor Jason was greatly abashed, and made up his mind that the people
of Iolchos were exceedingly ill-bred, to take such public notice of an
accidental deficiency in his dress. Meanwhile, whether it were that they
hustled him forward, or that Jason, of his own accord, thrust a passage
through the crowd, it so happened that he soon found himself close to
the smoking altar, where King Pelias was sacrificing the black bull. The
murmur and hum of the multitude, in their surprise at the spectacle
of Jason with his one bare foot, grew so loud that it disturbed the
ceremonies; and the king, holding the great knife with which he was just
going to cut the bull's throat, turned angrily about, and fixed his
eyes on Jason. The people had now withdrawn from around him, so that
the youth stood in an open space, near the smoking altar, front to front
with the angry King Pelias.

"Who are you?" cried the king, with a terrible frown. "And how dare you
make this disturbance, while I am sacrificing a black bull to my father
Neptune?"

"It is no fault of mine," answered Jason. "Your majesty must blame the
rudeness of your subjects, who have raised all this tumult because one
of my feet happens to be bare."

When Jason said this, the king gave a quick startled glance down at his
feet.

"Ha!" muttered he, "here is the one-sandaled fellow, sure enough! What
can I do with him?"

And he clutched more closely the great knife in his hand, as if he were
half a mind to slay Jason, instead of the black bull. The people round
about caught up the king's words, indistinctly as they were uttered; and
first there was a murmur amongst them, and then a loud shout.

"The one-sandaled man has come! The prophecy must be fulfilled!"