done the business as well as I could. I heartily thank you for your
trouble. And now, as I have a long way to go, and am rather in
haste--and as the king, my cousin, is anxious to receive the golden
apples--will you be kind enough to take the sky off my shoulders again?"

"Why, as to that," said the giant, chucking the golden apples into the
air twenty miles high, or thereabouts and catching them as they came
down--"as to that, my good friend, I consider you a little unreasonable.
Cannot I carry the golden apples to the king, your cousin, much quicker
than you could? As His Majesty is in such a hurry to get them, I promise
you to take my longest strides. And, besides, I have no fancy for
burdening myself with the sky, just now."

Here Hercules grew impatient, and gave a great shrug of his shoulders.
It being now twilight, you might have seen two or three stars tumble out
of their places. Everybody on earth looked upward in affright, thinking
that the sky might be going to fall next.

"Oh, that will never do!" cried Giant Atlas, with a great roar of
laughter. "I have not let fall so many stars within the last five
centuries. By the time you have stood there as long as I did, you will
begin to learn patience!"

"What!" shouted Hercules, very wrathfully, "do you intend to make me
bear this burden forever?"

"We will see about that, one of these days," answered the giant. "At all
events, you ought not to complain if you have to bear it the next
hundred years, or perhaps the next thousand. I bore it a good while
longer, in spite of the backache. Well, then, after a thousand years, if