ops, and in the high lakes, and water springs, and in the sky.

So they were married, and lived very happily, and had two children, a
boy called Phrixus, and a daughter named Helle. The two children had a
beautiful pet, a Ram with a fleece all of gold, which was given them by
the young god called Hermes, a beautiful god, with wings on his
shoon,--for these were the very Shoon of Swiftness, that he lent
afterwards to the boy, Perseus, who slew the Gorgon, and took her head.
This Ram the children used to play with, and they would ride on his
back, and roll about with him on the flowery meadows.

They would all have been happy, but for one thing. When there were
clouds in the sky, and when there was rain, then their mother, Nephele,
was always with them; but when the summer days were hot and cloudless,
then she went away, they did not know where. The long dry days made her
grow pale and thin, and, at last, she would vanish altogether, and never
come again, till the sky grew soft and gray with rain.

King Athamas grew weary of this, for often his wife would be long away.
Besides there was a very beautiful girl called Ino, a dark girl, who had
come in a ship of Phoenician merchantmen, and had stayed in the city
of the king when her friends sailed from Greece. The king saw her, and
often she would be at the palace, playing with the children when their
mother had disappeared with the Clouds, her sisters.

This Ino was a witch, and one day she put a drug into the king's wine,
and when he had drunk it, he quite forgot Nephele, his wife, and fell in
love with Ino. At last he married her, and they had two children, a boy
and a girl, and Ino wore the crown, and was queen, and gave orders that
Nephele should never be allowed to enter the palace any more. So Phrixus
and Helle never saw their mother, and they were dressed in ragged old
skins of deer, and were ill fed, and were set to do hard work in the
house, while the children of Ino wore gold crowns in their hair, and
were dressed in fine raiment, and had the best of everything.

One day when Phrixus and Helle were in the field, herding the sheep (for
now they were treated like peasant children, and had to work for their
bread), they met an old woman, all wrinkled, and poorly clothed, and
they took pity on her, and brought her home with them. Queen Ino saw
her, and as she wanted a nurse for her own children, she took her in to
be the nurse, and the old woman had charge of the ch