But they needed water to wash the flesh and their hands; and so one of the young men went down the hill to find some.  He was gone so long that the other young man became uneasy and went after him.

Cadmus waited for them till the fire had burned low.  He waited and waited till the sun was high in the sky.  He called and shouted, but no one answered him.  At last he took his sword in his hand and went down to see what was the matter.

He followed the path which his friends had taken, and soon came to a fine stream of cold water at the foot of a hill.  He saw something move among the bushes which grew near it.  It was a fierce dragon, waiting to spring upon him.  There was blood on the grass and leaves, and it was not hard to guess what had become of the two young men.

The beast sprang at Cadmus, and tried to seize him with its sharp claws.  But Cadmus leaped quickly aside and struck it in the neck with his long sword.  A great stream of black blood gushed out, and the dragon soon fell to the ground dead.  Cadmus had seen many fearful sights, but never anything so dreadful as this beast.  He had never been in so great danger before.  He sat down on the ground and trembled; and, all the time, he was weeping for his two friends.  How now was he to build a city, with no one to help him?

IV.  THE CITY.

While Cadmus was still weeping he was surprised to hear some one calling him.  He stood up and looked around.  On the hillside before him was a tall woman who had a helmet on her head and a shield in her hand.  Her eyes were gray, and her face, though not beautiful, was very noble.  Cadmus knew at once that she was Athena, the queen of the air—­she who gives wisdom to men.

Athena told Cadmus that he must take out the teeth of the dragon and sow them in the ground.  He thought that would be a queer kind of seed.  But she said that if he would do this, he would soon have men enough to help him build his city; and, before he could say a word, she had gone out of his sight.

[Illustration:  “Soon they began to fight among themselves.”]

The dragon had a great many teeth—­so many that when Cadmus had taken them out they filled his helmet heaping full.  The next thing was to find a good place to sow them.  Just as he turned away from the stream, he saw a yoke of oxen standing a little way off.  He went to them and found that they were hitched to a plow.  What more could he want?  The ground in the meadow was soft and black, and he drove the plow up and down, making long furrows as he went.  Then he dropped the teeth, one by one, into the furrows and covered them over with the rich soil.  When he had sown all of them in this way, he sat down on the hillside and watched to see what would happen.