wine, the king's daughter came into the hallway; she took a beaker from her father's table, and when a servant had poured wine into it, she gave it first to her father, and afterwards to Orion. Before he drank of it, Orion looked upon her, as she stood there before him in the torchlight. She seemed very stately, and fair, and beautiful after the fashion of beauty of the Greek women. As Orion drank of the best wine he had ever tasted, for Chios is famous for its wine, it certainly lost nothing of its savor because it came to him from the hand of this tall and erect princess. And as he looked upon her, he loved her. Gone was the memory of the Pleiades. He forgot he had come to see if the princess was as beautiful as they. He forgot to make any comparison. He only knew that Merope was beautiful, and that he loved her.

King Oenopion was not greatly prepossessed with Orion-indeed, he rather feared him, for all his gentle disposition; but he invited him to remain as his guest. And Orion stayed on, for he loved Merope, the king's daughter; and he thought she looked not with disfavor upon him. After several days had passed by, Orion asked Oenopion for the hand of his daughter in marriage. Now was the king highly displeased. He did not approve of Orion for a son-in-law, though why, I am sure, I do not know. I suspect that there was a streak of cowardice in him, and that he feared Orion might somehow endanger his throne. He would much rather have seen Orion gone from the country, or dead, than married to his lovely daughter. He was afraid to say as much, however, to Orion; so made first one excuse and then another. Orion insisted. Then the king replied that word had been brought him of the ravages

of a fierce wild boar in a corner of his kingdom; the people were in distress, and had sent for help. Of course, he said, the king's daughter could not be married with feasting and merry-making while the king's subjects were in peril. If Orion, who claimed to be such a marvelous hunter, would slay the boar, then, perhaps, the marriage might be discussed. Orion went and slew the boar with hardly any trouble at all, and soon returned, bringing the tusks as trophies for Merope. He thought that now surely he had won the favor of the king. But he was mistaken. Oenopion disliked him more than before. Instead of consenting to his wedding Merope, he set him still other tasks. Orion cleared the whole island of wild beasts and monsters, and brought the spoils to the princess. Oenopion, however, distrusted him, and hated him still. Despairing of being rid of the giant in any other way, he made him drunk with wine one day, and while Orion was in this helpless condition the king had his eyes put out, and then made the royal servants carry him out to the seashore, hoping, I suspect, that, drunk and blind, the waves would drown him.

In his desperate condition, Orion hardly knew what to do. He sought the advice of an oracle, and was instructed to procure the aid of certain blacksmiths, who, like himself, were giants. He set off to wander again, and traveled till he came to Lemnos, where he heard the sound of hammers striking on an anvil. He followed the sound, and came where he found Vulcan, the blacksmith god, and his attendants at work. Vulcan pitied him, and gave him Cedalion, one of the Cyclops, for a guide. Orion placed Cedalion upon his shoulders, and traveled towards the mountains of the east until he met

the god of the sun, who caused the first rays of the morning sun to fall upon the blinded eyes, and restored the power of sight to the giant.

Orion went back to his old life of hunting. Whether he still loved and remembered Merope or not, I can not tell you. But certain it is, as I learned the tale, that while hunting in a new country, he encountered a maiden more lovely than any he had yet seen. This was the goddess Diana, even more famed as a huntress than he as a hunter. It is not told in the story that he fell in love with her, but she was pleased with him, and showed him marked favor. Often they followed the chase together. In the end, news of this came to Apollo, the brother of Diana, and he became alarmed lest she should love Orion and desire to marry him. Now Diana had sworn never to marry, and it is a terrible thing for a god or a goddess to break an oath. Such a catastrophe Apollo determined to prevent, no matter how much suffering he might cause.

One day, while they were walking along the shore of the sea, he began to tease his sister, saying he did not believe she could shoot so well as she was famed to do.

66

"Very well, I will," Apollo rejoined. Do you see that black speck floating yonder far out on the waves? I dare you to try to hit it.”

The huntress queen lifted her silver bow, fitted a shaft, and, with an aim that looked almost careless, shot her arrow swift and true. The speck sank, and reappeared no more. Alas! it was but a sorry jest Apollo had played. That speck was the head of Orion, who had been sporting in the waves. When Diana learned that she had slain her favorite, she was sorely grieved.

But grief and tears could not restore life to the dead. The best she could do was to place Orion as a constellation among the stars.

And there he appears, visible to you and me to this day, the most splendid of all the constellations. You can most readily find him in the autumn,-starting in the east early in the evening, and following the chase across the sky through the night, a giant with girdle, sword, lion's skin, and club. The Pleiades flee before him, ever pursued, never caught. And always following close at his heels is his faithful dog, its mouth made of the wonderful star Sirius, the Dog Star, the brightest in the heavens.

When, with the aid of your charts, you have found the constellation of Orion, to the south and east of Perseus, you will never fail to recognize it afterwards. It contains two first magnitude stars, Betelgeuse and Rigel, that seem to be balanced against each other. Both are tremendous suns, probably thousands of times brighter than our sun, and so far away from us that no astronomer has succeeded in even estimating their distance. Between them lie three stars, almost in a straight row, that match each other in brilliancy and tint as perfectly as if they were selected gems. They are in Orion's belt, and below them hangs the hunter's sword, a line of fourth and fifth magnitude stars. Betelgeuse and Bellatrix are in his shoulder, and Rigel is in his uplifted foot. With club aloft in his right hand, and the skin of a lion for a shield on his left arm, Orion seems to be awaiting Taurus, who charges down upon him from the northwest, only to be driven forever backwards across the sky.

The fiery Aldebaran, in the right eye of Taurus, is a first magnitude star in the cluster forming a V along the nose of Taurus, and called the Hyades. The Hyades were nymphs, the daughters of Atlas, into whose care Jove intrusted the infant Bacchus, and whose fidelity was so great that he rewarded them by giving them a place in the sky. The Hyades have always been associated with rainy weather.

Another cluster in Taurus is, perhaps, the most celebrated group among the stars, the lovely Pleiades'Though small their size and pale their light, wide is their fame." In all ages and all countries the Pleiades have been watched and wondered at. By many tribes they have been associated with religious rites, and numberless myths have grown up about them. Often they are known as the Seven Stars or the Seven Sisters, although most people can see only six. One of the stars may have been brighter at some time, because the story of the lost Pleiad is known far and wide. In our rare and delightful Texas atmosphere, which rivals that of Italy and Egypt, I have counted more than seven with the naked eye.

There has always seemed to be a misty light about them that did not come from the visible stars themselves; and at last photography has revealed the fact that a vast nebula surrounds the Pleiades, seeming to connect them as one great system in the formative stage. They are so vastly far from us that we have no idea how great the distance is, but it requires more than a hundred years for their light to reach us. The Pleiades chart, which is on a much larger scale than our other charts, will show you their positions and their names.