choicest portions for his share; and he found his legs almost as quickly as a young partridge.
In fact, by the time when ordinary children are beginning to toddle uncertainly, this boy, whom Hyrieus had named Orion, was as tall as his foster-father. Nor did he cease his prodigious growth when he reached the ordinary limits of mankind: not even Otus and Ephialtes, who rebelled against the gods and strove to set Mt. Ossa upon Pelion that they might scale Olympus itself,—not even these gigantic youths could compare with Orion. And we have the word of Odysseus who beheld them among the shades in Hades that those portentous twins were at nine years of age fifty-four feet in height and some thirteen across the shoulders.
He was as handsome as one of the immortals, too, this Orion. Well proportioned and graceful in spite of his size, he roamed the woods and fields with the agility and tirelessness of one of the wild creatures whose ways seemed to have an endless fascination for him.
Hyrieus began to fare better than ever before, for the boy would return from these expeditions with rabbits and hares, with quail, wood pigeons, partridges and ducks, which he had snared or caught with his hands by some sudden pounce after a long stalk.
Presently his foster-father showed him how to make a bow and arrows; and one day the youngster proudly appeared before the hut with a roebuck upon his shoulders. It was not long before he had learned to outwit the great red stags of the hills, to chase
successfully the long-horned wild goats, and even to bring back chamois from the precipitous fastnesses of rocky, fir-clad Mt. Cithæron, or the crags of two-peaked Helicon. By the time he had reached his early teens he was already a mighty hunter, who had met and vanquished the lynx, the wolf and the brown bear, who could stand up to the charge of an infuriated wild boar, and whose chief desire was to take in fair fight the lion skin he wished for a cloak.
Fierce as he was, however, in attacking some snarling wild beast with his great club, he was always gentle and thoughtful to his foster-father; and Hyrieus many a time blessed the day when his hospitality had fallen upon such fruitful soil. To be sure, as the good farmer grew old, his unbounded pride in the feats of this stripling cast at times a reflected glory upon himself: there were moments when he looked upon Orion's great muscles and the trophies of his strength and fleetness almost as if these were to be credited to his very own flesh and blood. Yet in the bottom of his heart there was ever a slight feeling of awe at this prodigy who had come to comfort his old age; and this was deepened when he learned of one strange power which the youth possessed.
Exulting in his own swiftness of foot, Orion was one day chasing a roebuck, endeavoring to run down the bounding little creature on equal terms. The deer made for the river, and finding itself hard pressed, sprang in and swam the wide stream. Orion, close behind, excitedly plunged in after his quarry; and though the water was far above his head, he actually
gained upon the deer in crossing, caught it on the opposite shore, and bore the carcass home in triumph. It seemed perfectly natural to him to be able to walk through the water, without touching bottom, almost as easily as on dry land; but Hyrieus was filled with astonishment at his story and could scarcely credit it until he saw the youth a few days later perform the same miraculous feat in the neighboring lake, advancing with great strides through fifty feet of water, only his head showing above the surface. Unknown to either of them, this was the natal gift of Poseidon, god of the sea and waters. Orion troubled himself little enough about whence it came or its singularity; but from that hour rivers and lakes were no obstacle to him, and when he roamed further and reached the great sea itself, he found himself master of even this, and able to travel through the salt surge and the heaving waves of Poseidon's own domain. Thereafter, the farthest confines of Greece, nay even Thrace, Macedon and remote Illyria, could not satisfy this passion for wandering. He learned to know the aspect of inaccessible Olympus from the north and west as well as the familiar one from the south. The unknown, with its new animals and fresh landscapes, ever called him on to wider and wider swings from his Bœotian home.
When he reached young manhood, all who beheld him agreed that he was handsomest among the sons of men—if indeed he were of human origin. The maidens of Tanagra, Thebes and Platæa did not say so much, but their eyes spoke for them when the swift-footed