This is just the
time and place to meet the Three Gray Women. Be careful that they do not
see you before you see them, for though they have but a single eye among
the three, it is as sharp-sighted as half a dozen common eyes."

"But what must I do," asked Perseus, "when we meet them?"

Quicksilver explained to Perseus how the Three Gray Women managed with
their one eye. They were in the habit, it seems, of changing it from one
to another, as if it had been a pair of spectacles, or--which would have
suited them better--a quizzing glass. When one of the three had kept the
eye a certain time, she took it out of the socket and passed it to one
of her sisters, whose turn it might happen to be, and who immediately
clapped it into her own head and enjoyed a peep at the visible world.
Thus it will easily be understood that only one of the Three Gray Women
could see, while the other two were in utter darkness; and, moreover, at
the instant when the eye was passing from hand to hand, none of the poor
old ladies was able to see a wink. I have heard of a great many strange
things in my day, and have witnessed not a few, but none, it seems to
me, that can compare with the oddity of these Three Gray Women all
peeping through a single eye.

So thought Perseus, likewise, and was so astonished that he almost
fancied his companion was joking with him, and that there were no such
old women in the world.

"You will soon find whether I tell the truth or no," observed
Quicksilver. "Hark! hush! hist! hist! There they come now!"

Perseus looked earnestly through the dusk of the evening, and there,
sure enough, at no great distance off, he descried the Three Gray Women.
The light being so faint, he could not well make out what sort of
figures they were; only he discovered that they had long gray hair, and
as they came nearer he saw that two of them had but the empty socket of
an eye in the middle of their foreheads. But in the middle of the third
sister's forehead there was a very large, bright and piercing eye, which
sparkled like a great diamond in a ring; and so penetrating did it seem
to be that Perseus could not help thinking it must possess the gift of
seeing in the darkest midnight just as perfectly as at noonday. The
sight of three persons' eyes was melted and collected into that single
one.

Thus the three old dames got along about as comfortably, upon the whole,
as if they could all see at once. She who chanced to have the eye i