when he had come to be quite an old man, his soldiers were assembled in a field outside of the city, and he went out to review them. While he was engaged in exercising and reviewing the troops, a dreadful shower came up, with thunder and lightning, which made the people run in all directions, and half blinded their eyes, so that they could scarcely see; and, when the shower was over, no Romulus was there, and they never saw him again. The people said that his father Mars they believed that the god Mars

*

was his father - had come and carried him away to

heaven.

They mourned and lamented him; for

then they had no king."

Just as Glassée arrived at the end of the story of Romulus, some drops of a real shower came pattering down; for they had been listening so attentively, that not even one little fairy had looked up and seen that a great black cloud was coming. It was ready to burst right over their heads; and, had they not jumped up and run

*See note, p. 32.

pell-mell, queen and all, - scampering away, and creeping under their leaves, and into their flow

ers, and to all their sheltering places, they would

have been so drenched and battered by the rain, that probably not a fairy of them all would ever have held up her head again!

CHAPTER III.

THE SECOND DAY.

THE rain had proved not only a shower, but quite a tempest, which had lasted nearly all night; so that, the next day, the fairies could not assemble where they had been, their flowery banks being all too wet. But, instead, they took refuge in a pretty little nook, sheltered by ivy vines and laurustinus bushes. There each managed to seat herself on some round pebble-stone, or in some branch gently and lazily swinging to and fro.

They were quite favorably impressed with Glassée's capacity for story-telling, and were eager that she should recommence. Her self-respect was much increased by having to tell of such

dignified personages as kings and grand people: so she sat herself up with as much stateliness as any young lady would in relating subjects so important.

"What could they do without a king?" asked little Vial. "One question," announced the queen's secretary, who had to keep the account. Poor Vial was reminded of the penalty. "But it is only one," she thought to herself: "I shall escape."

"They went a long time," said Glassée, "without a king; and then the people were anxious to have one again. They thought and talked about it, and sent to a town among the hills the Sabine Hills, over there to the eastward-for a person who was living there. He was a very wise man, and they knew that he would make a good king. But he was happy there in the country, and was very, very sorry to leave his home, where he had lived with his wife, and, after his wife died, with the good goddess Egeria.* For

*The young reader must remember that these times of an

he was fond of the goddess Egeria, so people said;

and Egeria was fond of him. long walks in the fields and

He used to take

groves, and she

would come and talk with him. He thought he should lose all these delightful rambles in the country with his companion Egeria if he should become king: but the people entreated him so urgently, that at length he was forced to consent; so he came to Rome, and they made him king. His name was Numa.*

"Numa was always thoughtful and prudent, and made the people live in peace; and he had churches built, and required them all to go to church properly. One of his great pleasures was still to go out into the fields and groves; and there, behold! his old friend Egeria came and visited him still. There is a pretty fountain which is only three or four miles from Rome; and there Numa would go and sit, they say, and his lov

cient Rome were the times of gods and goddesses, as people believed.

* Numa Pompilius.