THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 125

earth, near by. With the force of that idle blow, the
great rock was shattered all to pieces. It cost the
stranger no more effort to achieve this feat of a giant’s
strength than for one of the young maidens to touch her
_ sister’s rosy cheek with a flower.

“Do you not believe,” said he, looking at the damsels
with a smile, “that such a blow would have crushed one
of the dragon’s hundred heads ? ”

Then he sat down on the grass, and told them the
story of his life, or as much of it as he could remember,
from the day when he was first cradled in a warrior’s
brazen shield. While he lay there, two immense ser-
pents came gliding over the floor, and opened their
hideous jaws to devour him; and he, a baby of a few
mouths old, had griped one of the fierce snakes in each
of his little fists, and strangled them to death. When
he was but a stripling, he had killed a huge lion, almost
as big as the one whose vast and shaggy hide he now
wore upon his shoulders. The next thing that he had
done was to fight a battle with an ugly sort of monster,
called a hydra, which had no less than nine heads, and
exceedingly sharp teeth in every one of them.

“But the dragon of the Hesperides, you know,”
observed one of the damsels, “has a hundred heads! ”

‘““ Nevertheless,” replied the stranger, “I would rather
fight two such dragons than a single hydra. For, as fast
as I cut off a head, two others grew in its place; and,
besides, there was one of the heads that could not possi-
bly be killed, but kept biting as fiercely as ever, long
aiter it was cut off. So I was forced to bury it under a