then a breeze stirred the boughs
aside and gave Jason a glimpse of the sky, lest in that deep obscurity
he might forget that there was one overhead. At length, when they had
gone further and further into the heart of the duskiness, Medea
squeezed Jason's hand.

"Look yonder," she whispered. "Do you see it?"

Gleaming among the venerable oaks there was a radiance, not like the
moonbeams, but rather resembling the golden glory of the setting sun.
It proceeded from an object which appeared to be suspended at about a
man's height from the ground, a little further within the wood.

"What is it?" asked Jason.

"Have you come so far to seek it," exclaimed Medea, "and do you not
recognize the meed of all your toils and perils when it glitters
before your eyes? It is the Golden Fleece."

Jason went onward a few steps further, and then stopped to gaze. Oh,
how beautiful it looked, shining with a marvelous light of its own,
that inestimable prize which so many heroes had longed to behold, but
had perished in the quest of it, either by the perils of their voyage
or by the fiery breath of the brazen-lunged bulls.

"How gloriously it shines!" cried Jason in a rapture. "It has surely
been dipped in the richest gold of sunset. Let me hasten onward and
take it to my bosom."

"Stay," said Medea, holding him back. "Have you forgotten what guards
it?"

To say the truth, in the joy of beholding the object of his desires,
the terrible dragon had quite slipped out of Jason's memory. Soon,
however, something came to pass that reminded him what perils were
still to be encountered. An antelope that probably mistook the yellow
radiance for sunrise came bounding fleetly through the grove. He was
rushing straight toward the Golden Fleece, when suddenly there was a
frightful hiss and the immense head and half the scaly body of the
dragon was thrust forth (for he was twisted round the trunk of the
tree on which the fleece hung), and seizing the poor antelope,
swallowed him with one snap of his jaws.

After this feat, the dragon seemed sensible that some other living
creature was within reach, on which he felt inclined to finish his
meal. In various directions he kept poking his ugly snout among the
trees, stretching out his neck a terrible long way, now here, now
there and now close to the spot where Jason and the princess were
hiding behind an oak. Upon my word, as the head came waving and
undulating through the air and reaching almost w