the
hair on her head; the blood left her face; the eyes remained fixed on
the grief-stricken countenance; in the whole body there was no longer
any sign of life. The veins ceased to carry blood; the neck stiffened;
arms and feet grew rigid; the whole body was transformed into cold and
lifeless stone. Nothing living remained to her except her tears, which
continued flowing from her stony eyes.

Then a mighty wind lifted the image of stone, carried it over the sea
and set it down in Lydia, the old home of Niobe, in the barren
mountains under the stony cliffs of Sipylus. Here Niobe remained fixed
as a marble statue on the summit of the mountain, and to this very day
you can see the grief-stricken mother in tears.

[Illustration: NIOBE WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN]

THE GORGON'S HEAD

Perseus was the son of Danae, who was the daughter of a king. And when
Perseus was a very little boy, some wicked people put his mother and
himself into a chest and set them afloat upon the sea. The wind blew
freshly and drove the chest away from the shore, and the uneasy
billows tossed it up and down; while Danae clasped her child closely
to her bosom, and dreaded that some big wave would dash its foamy
crest over them both. The chest sailed on, however, and neither sank
nor was upset, until, when night was coming, it floated so near an
island that it got entangled in a fisherman's nets and was drawn out
high and dry upon the sand. This island was called Seriphus and it was
reigned over by King Polydectes, who happened to be the fisherman's
brother.

This fisherman, I am glad to tell you, was an exceedingly humane and
upright man. He showed great kindness to Danae and her little boy, and
continued to befriend them until Perseus had grown to be a handsome
youth, very strong and active and skilful in the use of arms. Long
before this time King Polydectes had seen the two strangers--the
mother and her child--who had come to his dominions in a floating
chest. As he was not good and kind, like his brother the fisherman,
but extremely wicked, he resolved to send Perseus on a dangerous
enterprise, in which he would probably be killed, and then to do some
great mischief to Danae herself. So this bad-hearted king spent a long
while in considering what was the most dangerous thing that a young
man could possibly undertake to perform. At last, having hit upon an
enterprise that promised to turn out as fatally as he desired, he sent
for the y