ents, ran as fast as they
could to the palace and shoved and pushed and elbowed one another in
their eagerness to get near a balcony on which Perseus showed himself,
holding the embroidered wallet in his hand.

On a platform within full view of the balcony sat the mighty King
Polydectes, amid his evil counselors, and with his flattering courtiers
in a semi-circle round about him. Monarch, counselors, courtiers and
subjects all gazed eagerly toward Perseus.

"Show us the head! Show us the head!" shouted the people; and there was
a fierceness in their cry as if they would tear Perseus to pieces unless
he should satisfy them with what he had to show. "Show us the head of
Medusa with the snaky locks!"

A feeling of sorrow and pity came over the youthful Perseus.

"O King Polydectes," cried he, "and ye many people, I am very loath to
show you the Gorgon's head!"

"Ah, the villain and coward!" yelled the people more fiercely than
before. "He is making game of us! He has no Gorgon's head! Show us the
head if you have it, or we will take your own head for a football!"

The evil counselors whispered bad advice in the king's ear; the
courtiers murmured, with one consent, that Perseus had shown disrespect
to their royal lord and master; and the great King Polydectes himself
waved his hand and ordered him, with the stern, deep voice of authority,
on his peril, to produce the head.

"Show me the Gorgon's head or I will cut off your own!"

And Perseus sighed.

"This instant," repeated Polydectes, "or you die!"

"Behold it then!" cried Perseus in a voice like the blast of a trumpet.

And suddenly holding up the head, not an eyelid had time to wink before
the wicked King Polydectes, his evil counselors and all his fierce
subjects were no longer anything but the mere images of a monarch and
his people. They were all fixed forever in the look and attitude of that
moment! At the first glimpse of the terrible head of Medusa, they
whitened into marble! And Perseus thrust the head back into his wallet
and went to tell his dear mother that she need no longer be afraid of
the wicked King Polydectes.

THE GOLDEN FLEECE

When Jason, the son of the dethroned King of Iolchos, was a little boy,
he was sent away from his parents and placed under the queerest
schoolmaster that ever you heard of. This learned person was one of the
people, or quadrupeds, called Centaurs. He lived in a cavern, and had
the body and legs of a white