ed again and she saw that
he was beautiful and brave looking. He had spoken of his death. The
nymph stood looking at him pitifully, and the youth, with the bronze
shield laid beside his knees and the strange hooked sword lying across
it, told her his story.

"I am Perseus," he said, "and my grandfather, men say, is king in
Argos. His name is Acrisius. Before I was born a prophecy was made to
him that the son of Danae, his daughter, would slay him. Acrisius was
frightened by the prophecy, and when I was born he put my mother and
myself into a chest, and he sent us adrift upon the waves of the sea.

"I did not know what a terrible peril I was in, for I was an infant
newly born. My mother was so hopeless that she came near to death. But
the wind and the waves did not destroy us: they brought us to a shore;
a shepherd found the chest, and he opened it and brought my mother and
myself out of it alive. The land we had come to was Seriphus. The
shepherd who found the chest and who rescued my mother and myself was
the brother of the king. His name was Dictys.

"In the shepherd's wattled house my mother stayed with me, a little
infant, and in that house I grew from babyhood to childhood, and from
childhood to boyhood. He was a kind man, this shepherd Dictys. His
brother Polydectes had put him away from the palace, but Dictys did not
grieve for that, for he was happy minding his sheep upon the hillside,
and he was happy in his little but of wattles and clay.

"Polydectes, the king, was seldom spoken to about his brother, and it
was years before he knew of the mother and child who had been brought
to live in Dictys's hut. But at last he heard of us, for strange things
began to be said about my mother--how she was beautiful, and how she
looked like one who had been favored by the gods. Then one day when he
was hurting, Polydectes the king came to the but of Dictys the shepherd.

"He saw Danae, my mother, there. By her looks he knew that she was a
king's daughter and one who had been favored by the gods. He wanted her
for his wife. But my mother hated this harsh and overbearing king, and
she would not wed with him. Often he came storming around the
shepherd's hut, and at last my mother had to take refuge from him in a
temple. There she became the priestess of the goddess.

"I was taken to the palace of Polydectes, and there I was brought up.
The king still stormed around where my mother was, more and more bent
on making her ma