s full of enchanting pictures of
flowers and gardens, and of castles and towers, and of mountain heights,
and of men and beasts, and of giants and dwarfs, and of the mighty
beings who dwell in the clouds with Jupiter. And those who looked upon
it were so filled with wonder and delight, that they forgot all about
the beautiful web which Arachne had woven. And Arachne herself was
ashamed and afraid when she saw it; and she hid her face in her hands
and wept.

"Oh, how can I live," she cried, "now that I must never again use loom
or spindle or distaff?"

And she kept on, weeping and weeping and weeping, and saying, "How can I
live?"

Then, when Athena saw that the poor maiden would never have any joy
unless she were allowed to spin and weave, she took pity on her and
said:

"I would free you from your bargain if I could, but that is a thing
which no one can do. You must hold to your agreement never to touch loom
or spindle again. And yet, since you will never be happy unless you can
spin and weave, I will give you a new form so that you can carry on your
work with neither spindle nor loom."

Then she touched Arachne with the tip of the spear which she sometimes
carried; and the maiden was changed at once into a nimble spider, which
ran into a shady place in the grass and began merrily to spin and weave
a beautiful web.

I have heard it said that all the spiders which have been in the world
since then are the children of Arachne; but I doubt whether this be
true. Yet, for aught I know, Arachne still lives and spins and weaves;
and the very next spider that you see may be she herself.

[Illustration]

THE LORD OF THE SILVER BOW.

I. DELOS.

Long before you or I or anybody else can remember, there lived with the
Mighty Folk on the mountain top a fair and gentle lady named Leto. So
fair and gentle was she that Jupiter loved her and made her his wife.
But when Juno, the queen of earth and sky, heard of this, she was very
angry; and she drove Leto down from the mountain and bade all things
great and small refuse to help her. So Leto fled like a wild deer from
land to land and could find no place in which to rest. She could not
stop, for then the ground would quake under her feet, and the stones
would cry out, "Go on! go on!" and birds and beasts and trees and men
would join in the cry; and no one in all the wide land took pity on her.

One day she came to the sea, and as she fled along the beach she lifted