Arachne was suddenly filled with an understanding of how she had wasted her skill, and she longed to get away from all sight and sound of her weaving. A vine trailed down to the ground from a near by tree. Arachne twisted it about her body and tried to pull herself up by it to the tree, but Minerva would not allow this. She touched Arachne's form with the juices of aconite and at once her hair came off, and her nose and her ears as well. Her body shrank and shrivelled and her head grew smaller. Her fingers fastened themselves to her side and served for legs. She hung from the vine which changed to a long gray thread. Arachne, the skilful weaver of Greece, was changed to Arachne, the spider of the forest. Through all the centuries since then she has been spinning her fragile threads and weaving her frail webs that a breath of wind, even, can destroy. THE HERO WITH A FAIRY GODMOTHER The prince who was the hero of one of your favorite once-upon-a-time stories was quite sure to have had a fairy godmother to watch over his ways and help in bringing his adventures to success. But Hercules, the Great, of old Greece than whom we have never known a greater hero, had two fairy godmothers. They were not known by exactly that name in the days when the myths were made, but there were two very powerful goddesses who presided over Hercules' destiny, and the odd thing about it was that no one knew which of these was the more important. Hercules began life just like any other baby except that his father was the mighty Jupiter, a fact which made everyone expect a great deal of him. And just as used to happen in your old fairy tales, he had enemies because of his noble birth. One of these was the goddess, Juno. Hercules lay in his cradle one day before he was able to walk even, and he suddenly saw something that would have frightened anyone much older than he. On each side of his cradle there appeared the green, hissing head of a huge serpent, their poisonous fangs thrust out to sting this child of the gods to death. Hercules' attendants ran away in terror not daring to give fight to the vipers, but he reached out his tiny hands, gripped a serpent in each by its throat and strangled them. People began to look at Hercules in wonder after that. They watched him grow up, just like any other boy except that his limbs were stronger and his muscles harder than those of the average boy of Greece. There were still those who admired him and those who hated him, knowing that he was, really, the son of a god. So his enemies put Hercules in charge of a kind of tutor named Eurystheus who was under orders to give him the most impossible tasks to try and perform. "The lad will fail and then we shall be well rid of him," the goddess Juno, who particularly disliked Hercules, said.