With all the eagerness that he had often praised in them, they fell
upon him, knowing not their own master. And so he perished, hunter and
hunted.

Only the goddess of the chase could have devised so terrible a revenge.


II. DIANA AND ENDYMION.

But with the daylight, all of Diana's joy in the wild life of the woods
seemed to fade. By night, as goddess of the moon, she watched over the
sleep of the earth,--measured the tides of the ocean, and went across
the wide path of heaven, slow and fair to see. And although she bore
her emblem of the bow, like a silver crescent, she was never terrible,
but beneficent and lovely.

Indeed, there was once a young shepherd, Endymion, who used to lead his
flocks high up the slopes of Mount Latmos to the purer air; and there,
while the sheep browsed, he spent his days and nights dreaming on the
solitary uplands. He was a beautiful youth and very lonely. Looking
down one night from the heavens near by and as lonely as he, Diana saw
him, and her heart was moved to tenderness for his weariness and
solitude. She cast a spell of sleep upon him, with eternal youth, white
and untroubled as moonlight. And there, night after night, she watched
his sheep for him, like any peasant maid who wanders slowly through the
pastures after the flocks, spinning white flax from her distaff as she
goes, alone and quite content.

Endymion dreamed such beautiful dreams as come only to happy poets.