hought of the wonderful life which lay before him, piped on his
shepherd's reeds, and tended his flock of sheep."

[1]Cheiron the Centaur lived in a cavern on Mount Pelion and was
reputed to be the wisest of mortals. All the young heroes of the time,
Jason, Achilles, and others, were his pupils and spent their boyhood
with him. He is sometimes represented as having the head of a man and
the body of a horse; but it is probable that he was only one of a race
of men noted for their skill in horsemanship. This story is supposed
to have been related by him to young Odysseus (Ulysses), who visited
him in his cavern.

PARIS AND CENONE

RELATED BY CHEIRON THE CENTAUR

"On the other side of the sea there stands a city, rich and mighty, the
like of which there is none in Greece. The name of this city is Troy,
although its inhabitants call it Ilios. There an old man, named Priam,
rules over a happy and peace-loving people. He dwells in a great
palace of polished marble, on a hill overlooking the plain; and his
granaries are stored with corn, and his flocks and herds are pastured
on the hills and mountain slopes behind the city.

"Many sons has King Priam; and they are brave and noble youths, well
worthy of such a father. The eldest of these sons is Hector, who, the
Trojans hope, will live to bring great honor to his native land.

"Just before the second son was born, a strange thing troubled the
family of old Priam. The queen dreamed that her babe had turned into a
firebrand, which burned up the walls and the high towers of Troy, and
left but smouldering ashes where once the proud city stood. She told
the king her dream; and when the child was born, they called a
soothsayer, who could foresee the mysteries of the future, and they
asked him what the vision meant.

"'It means,' said he, 'that this babe, if he lives, shall be a
firebrand in Troy, and shall turn its walls and its high towers into
heaps of smouldering ashes.'

"'But what shall be done with the child, that he may not do this
terrible thing?' asked Priam, greatly sorrowing, for the babe was very
beautiful.

"'Do not suffer that he shall live,' answered the soothsayer.

"Priam, the gentlest and most kind-hearted of men, could not bear to
harm the babe. So he called his master shepherd, and bade him take the
helpless child into the thick woods, which grow high up on the slopes
of Mount Ida, behind the city, and there to leave him alone. The