92 TROTTY’S WEDDING TOUR.

from the rock with the roses and the rat on it. The little
girl had heard nothing of the “ spar,’ it so happened, and
when she struck into a great crowd of silent people on
Gloucester Beach she was puzzled enough. And when she
saw on the water a little boat with men in it, and not thirty
feet from the boat a monster with a head like a horse’s, and
a forked tongue, and brown bunches on his back, and a tail
that seemed to stretch across the harbor, making as straight
for shore as the tide, she was so frightened that she dropped
on a stone by the edge of the crowd, and would have fainted,
if she had been old enough to know how. For she had been
reading stories, too, even in Gloucester, and even in 1817,
and there was a story that she read once, and had never for-
gotten, and never would. It was how Andromeda came down
to the beach, and how the dragon came out of the sea, and
how Andromeda would have been devoured (poor little
thing!) by the dreadful creature, if it had not been for
Perseus.

Her mother said that story was not true. Now she knew
better. There was the Dragon himself. She felt like An-
dromeda from head to foot. Would Perseus find his way to
Gloucester Beach? She sat down on the stone and shut her
eyes. She would not move. She dared not look.

In a minute there was a horrible noise. I know all about
it, for Andromeda’s daughter told me herself.

“Tt’s the Dragon!” thought Andromeda.

“Tt’s the gun!” said the crowd on the beach, who had