h the wooden bars of the window lower
down. Yet, whatever other living creatures may come or go, by those
windows of the barn, and high up on its dark rafters, there is always
a living creature working, ceaselessly working. When, through the
skylight, the sun-god drives a golden sunbeam, and a long shaft of
dancing dust-atoms passes from the window to what was once a part of
the early summer's glory, the work of the unresting toiler is also to
be seen, for the window is hung with shimmering grey tapestries made
by Arachne, the spider, and from rafter to rafter her threads are
suspended with inimitable skill.

She was a nymph once, they say--the daughter of Idmon the dyer, of
Colophon, a city of Lydia. In all Lydia there was none who could weave
as wove the beautiful Arachne. To watch her card the wool of the
white-fleeced sheep until in her fingers it grew like the soft clouds
that hang round the hill tops, was pleasure enough to draw nymphs from
the golden river Pactolus and from the vineyards of Tymolus. And when
she drove her swift shuttle hither and thither, still it was joy to
watch her wondrous skill. Magical was the growth of the web, fine of
woof, that her darting fingers span, and yet more magical the
exquisite devices that she then wrought upon it. For birds and flowers
and butterflies and pictures of all the beautiful things on earth were
limned by Arachne, and old tales grew alive again under her creative
needle.

To Pallas Athene, goddess of craftsmen, came tidings that at Colophon
in Lydia lived a nymph whose skill rivalled that of the goddess
herself, and she, ever jealous for her own honour, took on herself the
form of a woman bent with age, and, leaning on her staff, joined the
little crowd that hung round Arachne as she plied her busy needle.
With white arms twined round each other the eager nymphs watched the
flowers spring up under her fingers, even as flowers spring from the
ground on the coming of Demeter, and Athene was fain to admire, while
she marvelled at the magic skill of the fair Arachne.

Gently she spoke to Arachne, and, with the persuasive words of a wise
old woman, warned her that she must not let her ambition soar too
high. Greater than all skilled craftswomen was the great goddess
Athene, and were Arachne, in impious vanity, to dream that one day she
might equal her, that were indeed a crime for any god to punish.

Glancing up for a moment from the picture whose perfect colours gre