t of the oak, living inside it, and as happy as could be when
its green leaves danced in the breeze.

Then another time Ceres would find a spring bubbling out of a little
hole in the earth, and she would play with her fingers in the water.
Immediately up through the sandy bed a nymph with dripping hair would
rise and float half out of the water, looking at Mother Ceres, and
swaying up and down with the water bubbles.

But when the mother asked whether her poor lost child had stopped to
drink of the fountain, the nymph with weeping eyes would answer
"No," in a murmuring voice which was just like the sound of a running
stream.

Often, too, she met fauns. These were little people with brown faces
who looked as if they had played a great deal in the sun. They had
hairy ears and little horns on their brows, and their legs were like
goats' legs on which they danced merrily about the woods and fields.
They were very kind creatures, and were very sorry for Mother Ceres
when they heard that her daughter was lost.

And once she met a rude band of satyrs who had faces like monkeys
and who had horses' tails behind; they were dancing and shouting in
a rough, noisy manner, and they only laughed when Ceres told them how
unhappy she was.

One day while she was crossing a lonely sheep-field she saw the god
Pan: he was sitting at the foot of a tall rock, making music on a
shepherd's flute. He too had horns on his brow, and hairy ears, and
goat's feet. He knew Mother Ceres and answered her questions kindly,
and he gave her some milk and honey to drink out of a wooden bowl. But
he knew nothing of Proserpina.

And so Mother Ceres went wandering about for nine long days and
nights. Now and then she found a withered flower, and these she picked
up and put in her bosom, because she fancied they might have fallen
from her daughter's hand. All day she went on through the hot
sunshine, and at night the flame of her torch would gleam on the
pathway, and she would continue her weary search without ever sitting
down to rest.

On the tenth day she came to the mouth of a cave. It was dark inside,
but a torch was burning dimly and lit up half of the gloomy place.
Ceres peeped in and held up her own torch before her, and then she saw
what looked like a woman, sitting on a heap of withered leaves, which
the wind had blown into the cave. She was a very strange-looking
woman: her head was shaped like a dog's, and round it she had a wreath
of snak