Sometimes she tapped with her finger against an oak tree, and at once its rough bark would open and a beautiful maiden would appear:  she was the spirit of the oak, living inside it, and as happy as could be when its green leaves danced in the breeze.

Then another time Ceres would find a spring bubbling out of a little hole in the earth, and she would play with her fingers in the water.  Immediately up through the sandy bed a nymph with dripping hair would rise and float half out of the water, looking at Mother Ceres, and swaying up and down with the water bubbles.

But when the mother asked whether her poor lost child had stopped to drink of the fountain, the nymph with weeping eyes would answer “No,” in a murmuring voice which was just like the sound of a running stream.

Often, too, she met fauns.  These were little people with brown faces who looked as if they had played a great deal in the sun.  They had hairy ears and little horns on their brows, and their legs were like goats’ legs on which they danced merrily about the woods and fields.  They were very kind creatures, and were very sorry for Mother Ceres when they heard that her daughter was lost.

And once she met a rude band of satyrs who had faces like monkeys and who had horses’ tails behind; they were dancing and shouting in a rough, noisy manner, and they only laughed when Ceres told them how unhappy she was.

One day while she was crossing a lonely sheep-field she saw the god Pan:  he was sitting at the foot of a tall rock, making music on a shepherd’s flute.  He too had horns on his brow, and hairy ears, and goat’s feet.  He knew Mother Ceres and answered her questions kindly, and he gave her some milk and honey to drink out of a wooden bowl.  But he knew nothing of Proserpina.

And so Mother Ceres went wandering about for nine long days and nights.  Now and then she found a withered flower, and these she picked up and put in her bosom, because she fancied they might have fallen from her daughter’s hand.  All day she went on through the hot sunshine, and at night the flame of her torch would gleam on the pathway, and she would continue her weary search without ever sitting down to rest.

On the tenth day she came to the mouth of a cave.  It was dark inside, but a torch was burning dimly and lit up half of the gloomy place.  Ceres peeped in and held up her own torch before her, and then she saw what looked like a woman, sitting on a heap of withered leaves, which the wind had blown into the cave.  She was a very strange-looking woman:  her head was shaped like a dog’s, and round it she had a wreath of snakes.

As soon as she saw her, Mother Ceres knew that this was a queer kind of person who was always grumbling and unhappy.  Her name was Hecate, and she would never say a word to other people unless they were unhappy too.  “I am sad enough,” thought poor Ceres, “to talk with Hecate:”  so she stepped into the cave and sat down on the withered leaves beside the dog-headed woman.