im, but under the water he saw
grains of gold glittering in the sand, and from that time forth the
river Pactolus was noted for its gold.

One lesson the peasant king had learnt by paying in suffering for a
mistake, but there was yet more suffering in store for the tragic
comedian.

He had now no wish for golden riches, nor even for power. He wished to
lead the simple life and to listen to the pipings of Pan along with
the goat-herds on the mountains or the wild creatures in the woods.
Thus it befell that he was present one day at a contest between Pan
and Apollo himself. It was a day of merry-making for nymphs and fauns
and dryads, and all those who lived in the lonely solitudes of Phrygia
came to listen to the music of the god who ruled them. For as Pan sat
in the shade of a forest one night and piped on his reeds until the
very shadows danced, and the water of the stream by which he sat leapt
high over the mossy stones it passed, and laughed aloud in its glee,
the god had so gloried in his own power that he cried:

"Who speaks of Apollo and his lyre? Some of the gods may be well
pleased with his music, and mayhap a bloodless man or two. But my
music strikes to the heart of the earth itself. It stirs with rapture
the very sap of the trees, and awakes to life and joy the innermost
soul of all things mortal."

Apollo heard his boast, and heard it angrily.

"Oh, thou whose soul is the soul of the untilled ground!" he said,
"wouldst thou place thy music, that is like the wind in the reeds,
beside my music, which is as the music of the spheres?"

And Pan, splashing with his goat's feet amongst the water-lilies of
the stream on the bank of which he sat, laughed loudly and cried:

"Yea, would I, Apollo! Willingly would I play thee a match--thou on
thy golden lyre--I on my reeds from the river."

Thus did it come to pass that Apollo and Pan matched against each
other their music, and King Midas was one of the judges.

First of all Pan took his fragile reeds, and as he played, the leaves
on the trees shivered, and the sleeping lilies raised their heads, and
the birds ceased their song to listen and then flew straight to their
mates. And all the beauty of the world grew more beautiful, and all
its terror grew yet more grim, and still Pan piped on, and laughed to
see the nymphs and the fauns first dance in joyousness and then
tremble in fear, and the buds to blossom, and the stags to bellow in
their lordship of the hi