ability, for she had already proved herself the wiser, if the wickeder, of the two. So, like a good sensible husband, he left everything to her management, and said he would run down to Corinth, and dedicate the Ar'go to the sea-god, Posei'don, who had a temple there. For he felt grateful to the ruler of the waters for his safe return at last, and did not, like too many sailors, forget his prayers as soon as he got to land. No sooner had Ja'son left home, than Mede'a began to prepare her plot. It was now full moon, the time all witches take to gather magic herbs. No ice-flower needed she this time, yet plants of no less potence sought she, far and wide. She cut them always with a brazen sickle, and tied them up in separate bundles, with hairs from the tail of a snow-white horse. She searched the forest through, and climbed the steeps of Pe'lion, and, more than once, called down that serpent-chariot - which seemed to be ever in mid-air above her waiting her command and flashed off to some far-distant peak, or into the tangled depths of some untrodden swamp, in search of plants, and seeds, and stones, and shells, and blood, and living things, necessary to compound the wondrous liquid on which hung the hopes of her success. When all was ready, she came back again to Æ'son's hut; for during all this time she had not stepped her foot within a house, or spoken to a living soul. She waited till the old man had fallen asleep, and then shut herself up with him alone, and began her sorcery. Peacefully the old man slept upon his bed, while e'tes's daughter into her witches' caldron cast the material she had so carefully provided. She muttered and mumbled, and her eyes shone with an unearthly light, as she stirred the seething mass with a dead twig which she had gathered on the mountain. Now and then she would break off a portion of the brittle branch, while her brows were knit as in supreme anxiety or pain. Suddenly her forehead became smooth, and an eager look of expectation overspread her face. The twig bent now, instead of breaking. A moment more, and buds appeared upon the naked wood; then leaves shot forth, and covered it with green; and what had been the end I may not say, for Mede'a threw it hastily upon the floor, and, catching a knife from her girdle, plunged it to the hilt in sleeping 'son's throat. What think you Ja'son would have said, had he been witness of this bloody act? Would not the memory of the boy Absyr'tus, and the thought of all the long and toilsome wanderings of the Greeks, combined with the sight of his white-haired, bleeding father, have caused him to hate this handsome woman with eternal hatred? It would seem so; and that, perchance, was why she worked her spell in Ja'son's absence. The purple blood ran down, and formed a dark pool on the earthen floor. The old man's face was white, and his form was still. It was the critical moment. Haste would be fatal; delay, deadly. Mede'a's hand did not tremble, but a bright spot burned on either cheek, as she ladled out some of her steaming liquid with a curious shell, and poured it into the knife-wound in the dead man's throat. Again and again she repeated the act, and then sealed the opening with a thin strip of tenacious bark, smeared with some adhesive gum. Then she filled a silver goblet with the liquid that was left, and, raising the body to a sitting posture, poured it down the throat. The change was marvellous, and quicker than the eye could follow; it was as if a it was as if a juggler had thrown off a false beard and wig, and stood before you quite another man. "His feeble frame resumes a youthful air, His emptied arteries swell with fresh supplies." 1 Eson was young again, as young to all seeming as was his son, who so lately had mourned his father's feebleness. And Mede'a had done it all. What power she possessed! and how sad it was that she sometimes used that power for evil! Young 'son called up to see old Pe'lias the 1 Appendix, Note 51. |