Merissa, for example, was the protector of bees; and at her festivals, celebrated at the season of gathering in the sweets of the hive, all the viands and beverages with which the worshippers regaled themselves, were prepared with honey. Still more powerful was Seozeres, who held in subjection the winds and waters, and who being at the same time the guardian of animals, tempered the air to the shorn flock and brought the springs out of the rocks for the supply of the herd. Tliebse had the care of smiths and all the cunning workmanship of forges, and at his fete libations were poured in honor of him upon the hatchet and the ploughshare. Domestic happiness and good-fellowship among neighbors were presided over by the three sisters denominated fates in the mythology of the Greeks, and who besides interfered on the field of battle to throw their invisible shield over the favorite warrior; who sped the traveller on his way; and to whom the father on bringing his family across a new threshold offered sacrifice and invocation. Most of the religious festivals were celebrated at either seed-time or harvest. In the first instance, when the grain was scattered over the furrows in the hope that the land would yield its increase, the sower supplicated the friendly interposition of the heavenly powers; in the latter, after having laid up in storehouses the winter's supply of corn and wine, the reaper returned thanks to the celestial givers of all good things, and made merry with his friends in feasts. Nor at this season, when the sight of nature's decay dashes with a certain degree of sadness even the hilarity of the ingathering of crops did the pious mountaineers forget their dead, but uniting with the autumn which spreads over the graves the gorgeous pall of its many-colored leaves, they likewise strewed there whatever wild flowers bloomed in the mountains so late in the year. For they, too, believed in the life beyond the tomb, wherein there should be no _fana Muscov_ to infest the mountains of happiness, and where the warrior, laying aside his rifle and his bow, should hear no more of war beyond the home-march at beat of which he would enter within the gates of paradise.