brought to bay by the rush of waters. Achilles looked at it with
gentle eyes, a swift pleasure lighting his glance. It was a beautiful
structure. Its red-brown front and pointed, lifting roof had hardly
a Greek line or hint; but the spirit that built the Parthenon was in
it--facing the rippling lake. He moved softly across the smooth roadway
and leaned against the parapet of stone that guarded the water, studying
the line and colour of the house that faced him.

The man who planned it had loved it, and as it rose there in the light
it was perfect in every detail as it had been conceived--with one little
exception. On either side the doorway crouched massive grey-pink lions
wrought in stone, the heavy outspread paws and firm-set haunches resting
at royal ease. In the original plan these lions had not appeared. But
in their place had been two steers--wide-flanked and short-horned, with
lifted heads and nostrils snuffling free--something crude, brusque,
perhaps, but full of power and quick onslaught. The house that rose
behind them had been born of the same thought. Its pointed gable and its
facades, its lifted front, had the same look of challenge; the light,
firm-planted hoofs, the springing head, were all there--in the soft, red
stone running to brown in the flanks.

The stock-yard owner and his wife had liked the design--with no
suspicion of the symbol undergirding it. The man had liked it
all--steers and red-brown stone and all--but the wife had objected. She
had travelled far, and she had seen, on a certain building in Rome, two
lions guarding a ducal entrance.

Now that the house was finished, the architect seldom passed that way.
But when he did he swore at the lions, softly, as he whirred by. He had
done a mighty thing--conceived in steel and stone a house that fitted