I

1. When Jason, the son of the dethroned king of Iolchos, was a little boy, he was sent away from his parents and placed under the queerest schoolmaster that ever you heard of. This learned person was one of the people or quadrupeds called Centaurs. He lived in a cavern, and had the body and legs of a white horse, with the head and shoulders of a man. His name was Chiron; and, in spite of his odd appearance, he was a very excellent teacher.

2. The good Chiron taught his pupils how to play upon the harp, and how to cure diseases, and how to use the sword and shield, together with various other branches of education in which the lads of those days used to be instructed, instead of writing and arithmetic.

3. So Jason dwelt in the cave, with his four-footed Chiron, from the time that he was an infant only a few months old until he had grown to the full height of a man.

4. At length, being now a tall and athletic youth, Jason resolved to seek his fortune in the world. He had heard that he himself was a prince royal, and that his father, King Æson, had been deprived of the kingdom of Iolchos by a certain Pelias, who would also have killed Jason had he not been hidden in the Centaur's cave. And being come to the strength of a man, Jason determined to set all this business to rights, and to punish the wicked Pelias for wronging his dear father, and to cast him down from the throne and seat himself there instead.

5. With this intention he took a spear in each hand, and threw a leopard's skin over his shoulders to keep off the rain, and set forth on his travels, with his long, yellow ringlets waving in the wind. The part of his dress on which he most prided himself was a pair of sandals that had been his father's. They were handsomely embroidered, and were tied upon his feet with strings of gold.

6. I know not how far Jason had traveled when he came to a turbulent river, which rushed right across his pathway, with specks of white foam among its black eddies, hurrying onward, and roaring angrily as it went. He stepped boldly into the raging and foamy current and began to stagger away from the shore.

7. Jason's two spears, one in each hand, kept him from stumbling and enabled him to feel his way among the hidden rocks. When he was half way across, his foot was caught in a crevice between two rocks, and stuck there so fast that, in the effort to get free, he lost one of his golden-stringed sandals.

8. After traveling a pretty long distance, he came to a town situated at the foot of a mountain, and not a great way from the shore of the sea. On the outside of the town there was an immense crowd of people. Jason inquired of one of the multitude why so many persons were here assembled.

9. "This is the kingdom of Iolchos," answered the man, "and we are the subjects of King Pelias. Our monarch has summoned us together that we may see him sacrifice a black bull to Neptune. Yonder is the king, where you see the smoke going up from the altar."

10. While the man spoke, he eyed Jason with great curiosity, for his garb was quite unlike that of the Iolchians, and it looked very odd to see a youth with a leopard's skin over his shoulders and each hand grasping a spear. Jason perceived, too, that the man stared particularly at his feet, one of which, you remember, was bare, while the other was decorated with his father's golden-stringed sandal.

11. "Look at him! only look at him!" said the man to his next neighbor. "Do you see? He wears but one sandal."

Upon this, first one person and then another began to stare at Jason, and everybody seemed to be greatly struck with something in his aspect; though they turned their eyes much oftener towards his feet than to any other part of his figure. Besides, he could hear them whispering to one another.

12. Poor Jason was greatly abashed, and made up his mind that the people of Iolchos were exceedingly ill bred to take such public notice of an accidental deficiency in his dress. Meanwhile, whether it was that they hustled him forward, or that Jason of his own accord thrust a passage through the crowd, it so happened that he soon found himself close to the smoking altar where King Pelias was sacrificing the black bull.