"
When he said that he had come for the three magic treasures that
they guarded, the kind nymph was more startled than she and her
sisters had been startled by the appearance of the strange youth
in their hidden valley. She turned away from him. But she looked
again and she saw that he was beautiful and brave looking. He had
spoken of his death. The nymph stood looking at him pitifully,
and the youth, with the bronze shield laid beside his knees and
the strange hooked sword lying across it, told her his story.
"I am Perseus," he said, "and my grandfather, men say, is king in
Argos. His name is Acrisius. Before I was born a prophecy was
made to him that the son of Danae, his daughter, would slay him.
Acrisius was frightened by the prophecy, and when I was born he
put my mother and myself into a chest, and he sent us adrift upon
the waves of the sea.
"I did not know what a terrible peril I was in, for I was an
infant newly born. My mother was so hopeless that she came near
to death. But the wind and the waves did not destroy us: they
brought us to a shore; a shepherd found the chest, and he opened
it and brought my mother and myself out of it alive. The land we
had come to was Seriphus. The shepherd who found the chest and
who rescued my mother and myself was the brother of the king. His
name was Dictys.
"In the shepherd's wattled house my mother stayed with me, a
little infant, and in that house I grew from babyhood to
childhood, and from childhood to boyhood.
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