nd in
it he shut up poor Danae with the woman that had been her nurse. They
saw nothing, hills or plains or sea, men or trees, they only saw the sun
at midday, and the sky, and the free birds flitting across it. There
Danae lay, and was weary and sad, and she could not guess why her
father thus imprisoned her. He used to visit her often and seemed kind
and sorry for her, but he would never listen when she implored him to
sell her for a slave into a far country, so that, at least, she might
see the world in which she lived.

Now on a day a mysterious thing happened; the old poet Pindar, who lived
long after, in the time of the war between the Greeks and the King of
Persia, says that a living stream of gold flowed down from the sky and
filled the chamber of Danae. Some time after this Danae bore a baby, a
son, the strongest and most beautiful of children. She and her nurse
kept it secret, and the child was brought up in an inner chamber of the
house of bronze. It was difficult to prevent so lively a child from
making a noise in his play, and one day, when Acrisius was with Danae,
the boy, now three or four years old, escaped from his nurse, and ran
from her room, laughing and shouting. Acrisius rushed out, and saw the
nurse catch the child, and throw her mantle over him. Acrisius seized
the boy, who stood firm on his little legs, with his head high, frowning
at his grandfather, and gazing in anger out of his large blue eyes.
Acrisius saw that this child would be dangerous when he became a man,
and in great anger he bade his guards take the nurse out, and strangle
her with a rope, while Danae knelt weeping at his feet.

When they were alone he said to Danae: 'Who is the father of this
child?' but she, with her boy on her arm, slipped past Acrisius, and out
of the open door, and up the staircase, into the open air. She ran to
the altar of Zeus, which was built in the court, and threw her arms
round it, thinking that there no man dared to touch her. 'I cry to Zeus
that is throned in the highest, the Lord of Thunder,' she said: 'for he
and no other is the father of my boy, even Perseus.' The sky was bright
and blue without a cloud, and Danae cried in vain. There came no flash
of lightning nor roll of thunder.

'Is it even so?' said Acrisius, 'then let Zeus guard his own.' He bade
his men drag Danae from the altar; and lock her again in the house of
bronze; while he had a great strong chest made. In that chest he had the
cr