they left their vessels for water beside her, and ran home to their
mother. Their long golden hair danced on their shoulders as they ran,
and they came, out of breath, to their mother the Queen, and asked her
to take the old woman to be their brother's nurse. The Queen was kind,
too, and the old woman lived in their house, till Zeus, the chief God,
made the God of the Dead send back Persephone, to be with her mother
through spring, and summer, and early autumn, but in winter she must
live with her husband in the dark palace beside the river of Ocean.

Then Demeter was glad, and she caused the grain to grow abundantly for
the people of Eleusis, and taught them ceremonies, and a kind of play in
which all the story of her sorrows and joy was acted. It was also taught
that the souls of men do not die with the death of their bodies, any
more than the seed of corn dies when it is buried in the dark earth, but
that they live again in a world more happy and beautiful than ours.
These ceremonies were called the Mysteries of Eleusis, and were famous
in all the world.

Theseus might have expected to find Eleusis a holy city, peaceful and
quiet. But he had heard, as he travelled, that in Eleusis was a strong
bully, named Cercyon; he was one of the rough Highlanders of Arcadia,
who lived in the hills of the centre of Southern Greece, which is called
Peloponnesus. He is said to have taken the kingship, and driven out the
descendants of the king whose daughters were kind to Demeter. The strong
man used to force all strangers to wrestle with him, and, when he threw
them, for he had never been thrown, he broke their backs.

Knowing this, and being himself fond of wrestling, Theseus walked
straight to the door of the king's house, though the men in the town
warned him, and the women looked at him with sad eyes. He found the gate
of the courtyard open, with the altar of Zeus the high God smoking in
the middle of it, and at the threshold two servants welcomed him, and
took him to the polished bath, and women washed him, and anointed him
with oil, and clothed him in fresh raiment, as was the manner in kings'
houses. Then they led him into the hall, and he walked straight up to
the high seats between the four pillars beside the hearth, in the middle
of the hall.

There Cercyon sat, eating and drinking, surrounded by a score of his
clan, great, broad, red-haired men, but he himself was the broadest and
the most brawny. He welcomed Theseu