it "Father Peneus."

One day when the sun shone warm, and the air was filled with the perfume
of flowers, Daphne wandered farther away from the river than she had
ever gone before. She passed through a shady wood and climbed a hill,
from the top of which she could see Father Peneus lying white and clear
and smiling in the valley below. Beyond her were other hills, and then
the green slopes and wooded top of great Mount Ossa. Ah, if she could
only climb to the summit of Ossa, she might have a view of the sea, and
of other mountains close by, and of the twin peaks of Mount Parnassus,
far, far to the south!

"Good-by, Father Peneus," she said. "I am going to climb the mountain;
but I will come back soon."

The river smiled, and Daphne ran onward, climbing one hill after
another, and wondering why the great mountain seemed still so far away.
By and by she came to the foot of a wooded slope where there was a
pretty waterfall and the ground was bespangled with thousands of
beautiful flowers; and she sat down there a moment to rest. Then from
the grove on the hilltop above her, came the sound of the loveliest
music she had ever heard. She stood up and listened. Some one was
playing on a lyre, and some one was singing. She was frightened; and
still the music was so charming that she could not run away.

Then, all at once, the sound ceased, and a young man, tall and fair and
with a face as bright as the morning sun, came down the hillside towards
her.

"Daphne!" he said; but she did not stop to hear. She turned and fled
like a frightened deer, back towards the Vale of Tempe.

"Daphne!" cried the young man. She did not know that it was Apollo, the
Lord of the Silver Bow; she only knew that the stranger was following
her, and she ran as fast as her fleet feet could carry her. No young man
had ever spoken to her before, and the sound of his voice filled her
heart with fear.

"She is the fairest maiden that I ever saw," said Apollo to himself. "If
I could only look at her face again and speak with her, how happy I
should be."

Through brake, through brier, over rocks and the trunks of fallen trees,
down rugged slopes, across mountain streams, leaping, flying, panting,
Daphne ran. She looked not once behind her, but she heard the swift
footsteps of Apollo coming always nearer; she heard the rattle of the
silver bow which hung from his shoulders; she heard his very breath, he
was so close to her. At last she was in the valle