a more hideous monster than the Minotaur himself!"

"Aha! do you think me so?" cried the king, laughing in his
cruel way. "To-morrow, at breakfast time, you shall have an
opportunity of judging which is the greater monster, the
Minotaur or the king! Take them away, guards; and let this
free-spoken youth be the Minotaur's first morsel."

Near the king's throne (though I had no time to tell you so
before) stood his daughter Ariadne. She was a beautiful and
tender-hearted maiden, and looked at these poor doomed captives
with very different feelings from those of the iron-breasted
King Minos. She really wept indeed, at the idea of how much
human happiness would be needlessly thrown away, by giving so
many young people, in the first bloom and rose blossom of their
lives, to be eaten up by a creature who, no doubt, would have
preferred a fat ox, or even a large pig, to the plumpest of
them. And when she beheld the brave, spirited figure of Prince
Theseus bearing himself so calmly in his terrible peril, she
grew a hundred times more pitiful than before. As the guards
were taking him away, she flung herself at the king's feet, and
besought him to set all the captives free, and especially this
one young man.

"Peace, foolish girl!" answered King Minos.

"What hast thou to do with an affair like this? It is a matter
of state policy, and therefore quite beyond thy weak
comprehension. Go water thy flowers, and think no more of these
Athenian caitiffs, whom the Minotaur shall as certainly eat up