28 | THE GORGON’S HEAD.

to tell you the truth, she has hardly vivacity enough for
my taste; and I think you would scarcely find her so
pleasant a travellmg companion as myself. She has her
good points, nevertheless; and vou will find the benefit
of them, in your encounter with the Gorgons.”

By this time it had grown quite dusk. They were
now come to a very wild and desert place, overgrown
with shaggy bushes, and so silent and solitary that no-
body seemed ever to have dwelt or journeyed there. All
was waste and desolate, in the gray twilight, which grew
every moment more obscure. Perseus looked about him,
rather disconsolately, and asked Quicksilver whether they
had a great deal farther to go.

“Hist! hist!°’ whispered his companion. ‘ Make
no noise! This is just the time and place to meet the
Three Gray Women. Be careful that they do not see
you before you see them; for, though they have but a
single eye among the three, it is as sharp-sighted as half
a dozen common eyes.”

“ But what must I do,’ asked Perseus, “ when we
meet them ?”

Quicksilver explained to Perseus how the Three Gray
Women managed with their one eye. They were in the
habit, it seems, of changing it from one to another, as if
it had been a pair of spectacles, or — which would have
suited them better — a quizzing-glass. When one of the
three had kept the eye a certain time, she took it out of
the socket and passed it to one of her sisters, whose turn
it might happen to be, and who immediately clapped it
into her own head, and enjoyed a peep at the visible