e close by, half hidden among the trees, there was a great
stone house with vines running over its walls and roof.

While Theseus was wondering who it could be that lived in this pretty
but lonely place, a man came out of the house and hurried down to the
road to meet him. He was a well-dressed man, and his face was wreathed
with smiles; and he bowed low to Theseus and invited him kindly to come
up to the house and be his guest that night.

"This is a lonely place," he said, "and it is not often that travelers
pass this way. But there is nothing that gives me so much joy as to find
strangers and feast them at my table and hear them tell of the things
they have seen and heard. Come up, and sup with me, and lodge under my
roof; and you shall sleep on a wonderful bed which I have--a bed which
fits every guest and cures him of every ill."

Theseus was pleased with the man's ways, and as he was both hungry and
tired, he went up with him and sat down under the vines by the door; and
the man said:

"Now I will go in and make the bed ready for you, and you can lie down
upon it and rest; and later, when you feel refreshed, you shall sit at
my table and sup with me, and I will listen to the pleasant tales which
I know you will tell."

When he had gone into the house, Theseus looked around him to see what
sort of a place it was. He was filled with surprise at the richness of
it--at the gold and silver and beautiful things with which every room
seemed to be adorned--for it was indeed a place fit for a prince. While
he was looking and wondering, the vines before him were parted and the
fair face of a young girl peeped out.

"Noble stranger," she whispered, "do not lie down on my master's bed,
for those who do so never rise again. Fly down the glen and hide
yourself in the deep woods ere he returns, or else there will be no
escape for you."

"Who is your master, fair maiden, that I should be afraid of him?" asked
Theseus.

"Men call him Procrustes, or the Stretcher," said the girl--and she
talked low and fast. "He is a robber. He brings hither all the strangers
that he finds traveling through the mountains. He puts them on his iron
bed. He robs them of all they have. No one who comes into his house ever
goes out again."

"Why do they call him the Stretcher? And what is that iron bed of his?"
asked Theseus, in no wise alarmed.

"Did he not tell you that it fits all guests?" said the girl; "and most
truly it does fit them.