HOW THESEUS SLEW THE MINOTAUR.

I.

Once there was a beautiful princess, named Aithra, who lived with her little son Theseus on an island in the Great Sea.

Now Theseus was a brave lad, the bravest in all the land, and he was gay and joyous all the day long; but Aithra, his mother, was sad and never smiled, save only when she looked at Theseus, for her husband had forgotten her and lived far away.

On the day when Theseus was fifteen years old his mother took him into the forest that grew around the famous Temple of Neptune, and said to him, "Theseus, my son, go into that tangle of bushes that grow around the great plane tree yonder and you will find a great flat stone: lift it, and bring me what lies beneath."

So Theseus went in among the bushes and finally found the great stone all overgrown with ivy and moss and he tried his best to lift it but could not, though he worked long and hard.

At last he went back to his mother and said, "I have found the stone, but I cannot lift it, nor do I think any man could in all the island."

Then his mother took him by the hand and led him back home. But every year on his birthday they would again go to the temple grove and

Theseus would try to lift the stone, until finally on the day he was eighteen his mother said to him, "Theseus, lift this stone to-day or never know who you are."

So Theseus went into the thicket and lifted his mightiest on it, and lo! it moved. Then said. Theseus, "If I break my heart in my body it shall up," and he heaved at it again, and over it rolled.

And when he looked on the ground beneath it he saw a great bronze sword with a hilt of gold, and by it a pair of golden sandals.

You may be sure he gathered them up and rushed to his mother shouting for joy. But when his mother saw them she caught him in her arms and wept; and finally she mastered her grief and said, "Hide them in your bosom, Theseus, my son, and come with me where we can look down upon the sea."

So they went to a cliff that overlooked the sea and Aithra pointed to a great land that could be seen lying like a dark line against the blue of the horizon.

“Do you know that land, Theseus?" asked his mother.

"Yes, that is Attica, where the Athenian people dwell."

"That is a fair land and large, Theseus, my son; and it looks toward the sunny south; a land of olive oil and honey, the joy of Gods and men.

For the Gods have girded it with mountains whose veins are of pure silver, and their bones of marble white as snow; and there the hills are sweet with thyme and basil, and the meadows with violet and asphodel, and the nightingales sing all day in the thickets, by the side of everflowing streams. There are twelve towns wel! peopled, the homes of an ancient race, the children of Kekrops the serpent-king, the sons of Mother Earth, who wear gold cicalas among the tresses of their golden hair; for like the cicalas they sprang from the earth, and like the cicalas they sing all day, rejoicing in the genial sun. What would you do, son Theseus, if you were king of such a land?”

Then Theseus stood astonished, as he looked across the broad, bright sea, and saw the fair Attic shore, from Sunium to Hymettus and Pentelicus, and all the mountain peaks which girdle Athens round. But Athens itself he could not see, for purple Ægina stood before it, midway across the sea.

Then his heart grew great within him and he said, "If I were king of such a land, I would rule it wisely and well in wisdom and in might, that when I died all men might weep over my tomb, and cry, 'Alas for the shepherd of his people!'"

And Aithra smiled, and said, "Take, then, the sword and sandals, and go to Egeus king

of Athens, who lives on Pallas's hill; and say to him, "The stone is lifted, but whose is the pledge beneath it?' Then show him the sword and the sandals and take what the Gods shall send."

Then she kissed Theseus, and wept over him; and went into the temple, and Theseus saw her

no more.

So Theseus started for Attica, the land of his father, and many and wonderful were the adventures he met on the way, for we learn how he slew the crafty "Spider of the Mountain," and overcame the mighty "Pine-bender;" how he kicked Sciron, the fierce robber, into the sea to feed his own tortoise; how he threw King Kerkuon in a wrestling match and punished Procrustes, the "stretcher;" and finally how, after he had arrived in Athens, he delivered his father, King Ægeus, from the power of the wicked enchantress Medeia and the tyranny of the sons of Pallas.

Now King Ægeus grew to love Theseus very much and all the Athenians rejoiced because their king had found such a noble son and an heir to his royal house.

So Theseus stayed with his father all winter, but as spring approached he noticed that the people grew very sad and where all had been rejoicing now all was silence, and when he asked. the reason no one would answer him a word.

Finally at the spring equinox, a herald came to Athens, and standing in the market place cried, "O people and King of Athens, where is the yearly tribute?"

Theseus did not understand, and went up to the herald and demanded what he meant by asking tribute of Athens.

The herald told him that on account of a foul wrong which the Athenians had done his people, the Cretans, that Minos, his king, had compelled Ægeus to pay him yearly as tribute seven youths and seven maidens to do with as he would.

Theseus could not believe that so great a people as the Athenians would pay so shameful a tribute, so he went to his father and asked him, but the king only turned away his face and wept. Then Theseus knew it was true, and his heart grew hot within him and he said he would be one of the seven youths and that he would kill King Minos or make him give up the tribute.

At this his father almost went wild with grief and told him that he must not go, for Minos. would thrust him, along with the others, into the great labyrinth that Daidalos had built for him; and from that labyrinth they could not escape for there they would meet the Minotaur, a terrible monster, that fed upon the flesh of men.

All this made Theseus angrier than ever, and more determined to go and slay the Minotaur