had the strong, hairy hind legs of a goat. He was a fearless creature,
and merry withal, and when Hermes had wrapped him up in a hare skin,
he sped to Olympus and showed his fellow-gods the son that had been
born to him and the beautiful nymph of the forest. Baby though he was,
Pan made the Olympians laugh. He had only made a woman, his own
mother, cry; all others rejoiced at the new creature that had come to
increase their merriment. And Bacchus, who loved him most of all, and
felt that here was a babe after his own heart, bestowed on him the
name by which he was forever known--Pan, meaning _All_.

Thus Pan grew up, the earthly equal of the Olympians, and, as he grew,
he took to himself the lordship of woods and of solitary places. He
was king of huntsmen and of fishermen, lord of flocks and herds and of
all the wild creatures of the forest. All living, soulless things
owned him their master; even the wild bees claimed him as their
overlord. He was ever merry, and when a riot of music and of laughter
slew the stillness of the shadowy woods, it was Pan who led the
dancing throng of white-limbed nymphs and gambolling satyrs, for whom
he made melody from the pipes for whose creation a maid had perished.

Round his horns and thick curls he presently came to wear a crown of
sharp pine-leaves, remembrance of another fair nymph whose destruction
he had brought about.

Pitys listened to the music of Pan, and followed him even as the
children followed the Pied Piper of later story. And ever his playing
lured her further on and into more dangerous and desolate places,
until at length she stood on the edge of a high cliff whose pitiless
front rushed sheer down to cruel rocks far below. There Pan's music
ceased, and Pitys knew all the joy and the sorrow of the world as the
god held out his arms to embrace her. But neither Pan nor Pitys had
remembrance of Boreas, the merciless north wind, whose love the nymph
had flouted.

Ere Pan could touch her, a blast, fierce and strong as death, had
seized the nymph's fragile body, and as a wind of March tears from the
tree the first white blossom that has dared to brave the ruthless
gales, and casts it, torn and dying, to the earth, so did Boreas grip
the slender Pitys and dash her life out on the rocks far down below.
From her body sprang the pine tree, slender, erect, clinging for dear
life to the sides of precipices, and by the prickly wreath he always
wore, Pan showed that he held he