pursuing. The shafts that her strong arm sped from her bow
smote straight to the heart of the beast that she chased, and almost
as swift as her arrow was she there to drive her spear into her
quarry. When at length her father the king learned that the beautiful
huntress, of whom all men spoke as of one only a little lower than
Diana, was none other than his daughter, he was not slow to own her as
his child. So proud was he of her beauty and grace, and of her
marvellous swiftness of foot and skill in the chase, that he would
fain have married her to one of the great ones of Greece, but Atalanta
had consulted an oracle. "Marry not," said the oracle. "To thee
marriage must bring woe."

So, with untouched heart, and with the daring and the courage of a
young lad, Atalanta came along with the heroes to the Calydonian Hunt.
She was so radiantly lovely, so young, so strong, so courageous, that
straightway Meleager loved her, and all the heroes gazed at her with
eyes that adored her beauty. And Diana, looking down at her, also
loved the maiden whom from childhood she had held in her protection--a
gallant, fearless virgin dear to her heart.

The grey mist rose from the marshes as the hunt began, and the hunters
of the boar had gone but a little way when they came upon traces of
the hated boar. Disembowelled beasts marked its track. Here, in a
flowery meadow, had it wallowed. There, in rich wheat land, had it
routed, and the marks of its bestial tusks were on the gashed grey
trunks of the trees that had once lived in the peace of a fruitful
olive grove.

In a marsh they found their enemy, and all the reeds quivered as it
heaved its vast bulk and hove aside the weed in which it had wallowed,
and rooted with its tusks amongst the wounded water-lilies before it
leapt with a snort to meet and to slay the men who had come against
it. A filthy thing it was, as its pink snout rose above the green ooze
of the marshes, and it looked up lustingly, defying the purity of the
blue skies of heaven, to bring to those who came against it a cruel,
shameful death.

Upon it, first of all, Jason cast his spear. But the sharp point only
touched it, and unwounded, the boar rushed on, its gross, bristly head
down, to disembowel, if it could, the gallant Nestor. In the branches
of a tree Nestor found safety, and Telamon rushed on to destroy the
filthy thing that would have made carrion of the sons of the gods. A
straggling cypress root caught his f