Hero Tales
CONTENTS How Apollo Came to Parnassus The Hunt in the Wood of Calydon The Choice of Hercules Alpheus and Arethusa The Golden Apple Paris and Oenone Hesione Paris and Helen Iphigenia The Hoard of the Elves The Forging of Balmung Idun and Her Apples The Doom of the Mischief-maker The Hunt in the Wood of Puelle Ogier the Dane and the Fairies How Charlemagne Crossed the Alps What Happened at Roncevaux
I
INTRODUCING MR. RAFFLES HOLMES
It was a blistering night in August. All day long the mercury in the
thermometer had been flirting with the figures at the top of the tube, and
the promised shower at night which a mendacious Weather Bureau had been
prophesying as a slight mitigation of our sufferings was conspicuous wholly
by its absence. I had but one comfort in the sweltering hours of the day,
afternoon and evening, and that was that my family were away in the
mountains, and there was no law against my sitting around all day clad only
in my pajamas, and otherwise concealed from possibly intruding eyes by the
wreaths of smoke that I extracted from the nineteen or twenty cigars which,
when there is no protesting eye to suggest otherwise, form my daily
allowance. I had tried every method known to the resourceful flat-dweller
of modern times to get cool and to stay so, but alas, it was impossible.
Even the radiators, which all winter long had never once given forth a
spark of heat, now hissed to the touch of my moistened finger. Enough
cooling drinks to float an ocean greyhound had passed into my inner man,
with no other result than to make me perspire more profusely than ever,
and in so far as sensations went, to make me feel hotter than before.
Finally, as a last resource, along about midnight, its gridiron floor
having had a chance to lose some of its stored-up warmth, I climbed out
upon the fire-escape at the rear of the Richmere, hitched my hammock from
one of the railings thereof to the leader running from the roof to the
CONTENTS How Apollo Came to Parnassus The Hunt in the Wood of Calydon The Choice of Hercules Alpheus and Arethusa The Golden Apple Paris and Oenone Hesione Paris and Helen Iphigenia The Hoard of the Elves The Forging of Balmung Idun and Her Apples The Doom of the Mischief-maker The Hunt in the Wood of Puelle Ogier the Dane and the Fairies How Charlemagne Crossed the Alps What Happened at Roncevaux