So Danae was comforted, and went home with Dictys the good
fisherman, and was a daughter to him and to his wife.

Fifteen years were passed and gone and the babe was now grown to a
tall lad and a sailor, and went many voyages after merchandise to
the islands round. His mother called him Perseus; but all the people
in Seriphos said that he was not the son of mortal man, and called
him Zeus, the son of the king of the Immortals. For though he was
but fifteen, he was taller by a head than any man in the island; and
he was the most skilful of all in running and wrestling and boxing,
and in throwing the quoit and the javelin, and in rowing with the
oar, and in playing on the harp, and in all which befits a man. And
he was brave and truthful, gentle and courteous, for good old Dictys
had trained him well; and well it was for Perseus that he had done
so.

Now one day at Samos, while the ship was lading, Perseus wandered
into a pleasant wood to get out of the sun, and sat down on the turf
and fell asleep. And as he slept a strange dream came to him--the
strangest dream which he had ever had in his life.

There came a lady to him through the wood, taller than he, or any
mortal man; but beautiful exceedingly, with grey eyes, clear and
piercing, but strangely soft and mild. On her head was a helmet, and
in her hand a spear. And over her shoulder, above her long blue
robes, hung a goat-skin, which bore up a mighty shield of brass,
polished like a mirror. She stood and looked at him with her clear
grey eyes; and Perseus saw that her eyelids never moved, nor her
eyeballs, but looked straight through and through him, and into his
very heart, as if she could see all the secrets of his soul, and