206 THE CHIMERA.

loins! A bound, indeed! Before he had time to draw
a breath, Bellerophon found himself five hundred feet
aloft, and still shooting upward, while the winged horse
snorted and trembled with terror and anger. Upward
he went, up, up, up, until he plunged into the cold,
misty bosom of a cloud, at which, only a little while
before, Bellerophon had been gazing, and fanecying it
a very pleasant spot. Then again, out of the heart of
the cloud, Pegasus shot down like a thunderbolt, as if
he meant to dash both himself and his rider headlong
against a rock. Then he went through about a thou-
sand of the wildest caprioles that had ever been _per-
formed either by a bird or a horse.

I cannot tell you half that he did. He skimmed
straight forward, and sideways, and backward. He
reared himself erect, with his fore legs on a wreath of
mist, and his hind legs on nothing at all. He flung out
his heels behind, and put down his head between his
legs, with his wings pointing right upward. At about
two miles’ height above the earth, he turned a somerset,
so that Bellerophon’s heels were where his head should
have been, and he seemed to look down into the sky,
instead of up. He twisted his head about, and, looking
Bellerophon in the face, with fire flashing from his eyes,
made a terrible attempt to bite him. He fluttered his
pinions so wildly that one of the silver feathers was
shaken out, and floating earthward, was picked up by the
child, who kept it as long as he lived, in memory of
Pegasus and Bellerophon.

But the latter (who, as you may judge, was as good