lovely or more unapproachable than in her bridal array. So loud and extravagant was this chorus of praise that it aroused the jealousy of some of her comrades.

"After all," broke out a black-eyed maiden spitefully, "she is the daughter of crooked-legged Alpheus. One might think, to hear them go on, that it was Hera herself who was being married to this wild man."

Orion, beside his bride, heard the taunt, and turned upon the speaker.

"I have never seen Hera," said he. "But I have seen Side—and she is beyond compare with any mortal I know. Until I behold the Goddess face to face and find I am mistaken, I shall believe that even on Olympus there is none that can challenge my bride."

The guests gasped and drew back a space at this audacious sacrilege. Side, however, smiled, well pleased. For in her secret heart she thought her

ardent lover spoke but the truth, and that had she been in Hera's place there would have been no need of the reconciliation with Zeus, for which the Dædala was held.

The large-eyed Queen of Heaven heard the rash speech and saw the presumption of this earth-born maiden. Her majestic brows knit in anger—and it was as if a cloud passed across the face of the sun. Sternly she refused the wedding sacrifice to herself, the Perfecter and Fulfiller, and all the folk were aghast at this portent.

But Side still smiled, serene in her blind conceit.

"Am I not perfect enough for you to worship?" said she softly to Orion.

His ardent answer was interrupted by a crash of thunder from the clear sky. Swiftly a great darkness fell upon the smiling plain. The merrymakers were blanched with fear as this blackness engulfed everything. They spoke in strained whispers. Darker and darker it grew, till one could not see his terrified neighbor's face. Even the murmurings ceased. All waited for some dread happening, they knew not what.

The silence was pierced by a sudden scream.

"Side!" cried Orion. "Side! Where are you?" He rushed wildly about, upsetting all in his path.

There was the sound of a rushing wind, nothing more. Then the gloom lifted as mysteriously as it had come.

But the bride was nowhere to be found. The wedding party crept to their homes. No earthly eye ever again beheld the presumptuous Side. The wise ones

whispered that the enraged Hera had cast her into Hades for her sacrilege. Once more Orion roamed the forests, more fiercely than ever.

It chanced one day, as he crashed through the thick bushes beside a river in hot chase of a noble stag, that he came suddenly upon a group of seven nymphs who, garlanded with flowers, were dancing upon the carpet of green moss.

They ceased their song at sight of him and huddled together behind the tallest in affright. This one, however, looked at him in bold defiance. She was Maia, eldest of these seven daughters of Atlas, and such was her beauty that it had already touched the heart of the Father of the Gods himself. Straight and slender she stood, gazing under level brows at the intruder as if challenging him to approach one under the protection of Zeus.

There was something about her proud carriage and the perfect oval of her face that made Orion think of his lost Side. The stag was forgotten. Impulsively he stepped forward to speak to her.

As this giant youth, with his torn and shaggy skin garment, and all flushed with the excitement of his chase, came closer, even Maia's bravery forsook her. She gave a cry of alarm, and all the seven turned and fled through the forest. Orion pursued them, as instinctively as he would have dashed after a startled roe. But to his surprise and chagrin they proved almost as fleet-footed as himself. He would hear them ahead, or catch a glimpse of them between the tree trunks, and plunge toward the spot—only to be baffled

time and again. At length, after hours of pursuit, he was compelled to own himself beaten and give up for the time.

The next day found him casting about like any deerhound for this elusive quarry. Yet they were as wary as he, and while he sighted them across a valley and renewed his efforts to the utmost, he never succeeded in drawing even as close as the first time, since the frightened nymphs had a trick of twisting and turning when hard pressed that always succeeded in carrying them out of sight and hearing.

This went on day after day till it became his main occupation, and while hunting game the thought of the fair Maia ever kept him on the alert. More than once he almost outwitted her and her sisters, and his determination became only hotter as time passed.

At last his opportunity came—five years after that first memorable meeting. From a hilltop he spied the group in the lush meadow by the river, pelting each other with anemones. Cautiously he crept along back of the ridge till he reached a point where he felt sure he could cut them off from the protecting forest. Then he leaped to his feet and started down the steep hillside as he had never run before.

Watchful from many alarms, they saw him almost immediately. With shrieks of terror they fled up the gentle slope. As he had foreseen, it became a race to see which should first reach the nearest tongue of forest that thrust towards the river.

Breathless but triumphant, Orion found himself at the edge of the tangled thicket. The group of maidens

halted fifty feet away, all except Maia weeping and crouching to the ground. In the open they were absolutely at his mercy.

Slowly he advanced towards them, wondering more than ever at the grace and charm of the leader, who faced him this time with less defiance, yet without any of the despair shown by her sisters. She called aloud upon Zeus for aid.

Closer and closer Orion approached, with never a word. Then with the same swift motion in which he was wont to pounce upon a trembling hare, he caught at his prize—and remained in this position, staring stupidly at seven white pigeons that fluttered away just out of his grasp and soared upward till they disappeared into the blue of the sky.

Zeus had listened to the prayer of Maia, and in his sovereign power he caught up all the seven into the firmament and translated them into stars, the shining Pleiades.

For the second time in his life Orion realized with dull resentment that there were unseen powers beyond his own. Like some wounded wolf he sought a couch in a cave, beneath a great overhanging rock in the nearby ravine, and lay there nursing his grievance.

When he finally came forth, the fair land of Hellas had become distasteful to him. He set forth to find some country beyond the seas where he might still be mightiest of all, and where naught could remind him of these rebuffs.

Wide were his wanderings across the mighty sea. Even to Scylla and Charybdis he came, and there left

perpetual memorials of his might. For on the Sicilian coast, where fell Charybdis threatened every mariner, he built a sickle-shaped strip of protecting rock that formed the safe harbor of Zancle, where, thanks to this shelter, the great city of Messina was to rise. Also, across the strait from hideous, six-headed Scylla he hurled into the open sea a rocky mass that juts from the shore as the promontory of Pelorus—whereon he reared a temple to his protector Poseidon, in which the inhabitants religiously adored the sea-god for thousands of years thereafter. For a time he dwelt in the mountains of Hera, whence fiery Ætna could be seen to the north, rumbling and spouting forth flame as the colossal Enceladus still struggled beneath its weight.

But, he could not long be content in any one place; so when he had mastered all the difficulties of rugged Sicily, he