Queen Hippolyta's love was of the kind that turns to bitterest hate if it is slighted; her pride was stung by the lad's look of scorn, and now her one thought was how to be revenged on him. She knew that her trusting lord would believe anything she told him, and she resolved in her wicked heart upon a plan by which Peleus should perish, and her own guilt never be known. With sighs and tears she told King Acastus that they were terribly deceived in the stranger who seemed so noble, for he had dared to ask her for the secret treasure, nay, had sought to take it from her by force. Never doubting that the Queen's story was true, Acastus was enraged beyond measure at such black-hearted ingratitude, and swore that Peleus should die for his treachery. Yet, because he was his guest, he would not kill him under his own roof, but took thought how he might destroy him in some other place. Now there was in that country a great mountain called Pelion, covered with forest, where there was good hunting. Many a tall deer had the King and Peleus chased in those green woods and through the glens where the rushing mountain streams went singing down their rocky moss-fringed channels. Acastus thought that he would take Peleus hunting there once more, and after a long day's chase they would rest, as they sometimes did, in a cavern of the hills for the night. Then he would steal the sleeping youth's weapons from his side, and bid his servants put him to death when morning came. But he himself would slip away before it was light, for he would not slay with his own hand one who had eaten his bread and drunk of his cup.

And all would have come to pass as he had planned, but that Zeus did not forget Peleus. After the day's hunting the King and his train went to the cave, and cooked their supper, and lay down to sleep. But in the early dawn Peleus awoke, and looked about him, and saw that his weapons were gone. Acastus, too, was gone, and in the doorway of the cave stood the servants, with white faces and drawn swords, whispering together, for they feared to set upon Peleus, unarmed though he was. Then he sprang up with a cry, and at that they rushed upon him all together. In that instant another cry sounded behind them, and a thundering clatter of horse-hoofs, and as they turned in amaze, a huge four-footed thing came plunging past them and stood at Peleus' side. At that sound and sight the men broke and fled; well they knew what the strange creature was, and once those forests had been full of them, though now they were rarely seen. Peleus also know by report that wondrous double-natured race, called Centaurs, but he gazed in wonder and some fear on what he now saw to be one of them. The Centaur's form was human down to the waist, but there it ended in the body of a powerful horse. Half man, half beast, he seemed at once terrible and mild; his eye flashed fire, and his brawny arms bent the bow he carried with a fierce gesture as he wheeled round to face the terrified servants, yet he had a wise and gentle face, and now bade the astonished youth fear nothing, in a deep and kindly voice.

"You came in a good hour for me," said Peleus, "for those men of the King's were about to kill me, and, as I heard them muttering, they had his commands, What this may mean I cannot guess; I know that I have served him faithfully, and he ever seemed to love me well. But tell me what I must call you, my kind deliverer, and what chance brought you here, and then I in turn will tell you who I am, and all my unhappy story."

"Call me Chiron," said the Centaur, "but ask not, Peleus, what chance sent me hither, for it was no chance, but the providence of Zeus. In your hour of temptation did you not call upon his name? Yes, his all-seeing eye marked that you were true to his law, and those who honour him in secret, my son, he rewards openly. Believe me, he has great things in store for you which I may not speak of now. But as for Acastus, know that his wife brought a lying tale to him, feigning that you had sought to do him that very wrong which she would have bribed you to commit."

Greatly did Peleus marvel how the Centaur could know all this, for he had said no word to any one of the Queen's wickedness, not only because he knew that she would utterly deny it, and none would believe him, but because a brave man will tell no tales of a woman, however bad she may be. Chiron smiled, as though he guessed his thoughts, and took him gently by the hand. "Come, prince," he said, "you see that you need tell me nothing. You will not think that so strange when you know more about myself and about my people who live in the depths of this forest among the silent places of the hills. But now I must take you far up the mountain, where my own dwelling is. It is no palace, such as you have come from, but so keen a hunter as you are will find it a lodging after your own heart, and there must be your home for many a long day."

So they went out of the cave into the morning sunshine, and as they took their way up the steep woodland paths, Chiron began to speak of the Centaurs and the joys of their wild life among the mountains. He told of the far-off days when he himself was young, and first left his mother's side to roam far and wide in the forest. How glorious it had been to felt he strength of his young limbs as he galloped under the waving boughs, or splashed through the clear waters of some shady pool at the foot of a tinkling waterfall! How wonderful, on summer nights, to climb the bare rocky summits of Pelion and look up into another forest, the forest of stars, where the great constellations wandered, the two Bears, and the Pleiades, like a flight of doves, and Orion the Huntsman, with his Dog! In those days, he said, the Centaur folk were many in number and lived at peace, knowing no enemies but the beasts of prey. These they made war upon with bows and arrows, for they had great skill in archery, but they hunted none other of the woodland creatures, and their food was only roots, and acorns and wild berries. Men, whom they seldom saw, they pitied and despised as a feeble and deformed race, and Chiron had heard a story that the poor two-legged things were once a tribe of Centaurs, who angered the gods, and were punished by being cut in half. But Chiron's people had learned at last to fear the puny race more than the fiercest and strongest wild beats, "and, Peleus," he said, "is how it came to pass. There was a great feast made in this land for the wedding of a king's son, to which all were bidden from far and near, even the Centaurs from the hills. Now, none of them had ever tasted wine, nor knew what it was, and when they were given to drink of it at the banquet they thought the gods themselves had not a diviner liquor, and they drank till madness came upon them, so that they began to insult and quarrel with the other guests. Then one of them, starting up, laid hands on the fair bride, crying that he would carry her off for a prize, and the rest, with savage laughter and shouting, seized the maidens, her companions. In a moment that merry feast was turned to a bloody fray; the hall rang with the shrieks of the women and the shouts of the men as they sprang to defend them and struggled with the furious Centaurs, who reared and plunged to and fro, lashing out with their terrible hoofs. Many a man went down in that deadly fight and was trampled to death as he fell, yet, Peleus, my people, for all their mighty strength, were no match for the folk they had despised, for these men, these weaklings, fought with weapons unknown to the Centaurs, with the sword and the spear. And one by one, though the great creatures fought long and stubbornly, they felt the fatal thrust of iron in breast of side, one by one they were struck down, till at last the whole troop lay dead or dying in the hall, and their red blood was mingled on its pavement with the red wine that ran from the overturned wine-jars. Ever since that day those who were left of my people have shunned the face of man, and hidden from him in the loneliest nooks of Pelion. For we have learnt that he is the destined lord of the earth, and where he comes all other creatures must give place, or else obey him. Therefore we, who cannot be tamed any more than our mountain torrents, must die out and disappear from our loved haunts. Soon there will be no more of us, and the time will come when men will even doubt if we ever existed."

"If I were you," Peleus replied, "I should hate the race that you say is ordained to subdue the earth and drive your people before it. How is it then, O Chiron, that you can show yourself so friendly to me, a man, and speak so patiently of the doom you foresee for your kindred?"

Once more his strange guide smiled, and it seemed to the youth that he looked at him with tenderness and with pity. "Dear lad," he said at last, "nothing that lives is so wonderful as man; but the immortal gods, when they gave him gifts above all Earth's other children, gave him also two things to keep him from growing too proud. These things are called Disease and Death. Now the first of these we Centaurs know nothing of, while as for the other, though we cannot live for ever, our natural life is many times longer than yours. You see me, Peleus, still in the prime of my strength, yet have I seen generations of men flourish and fall like the forest leaves. Alas! and I have seen their beauty and their strength decay untimely blighted by cruel sickness. When I saw this, compassion filled my heart, and because I knew that Mother Earth brings forth herbs of healing power for her children's sake, I set myself to learn them all, and to watch how every beast and bird would feed thereon, as its nature taught it, when it was ailing, that so I might become the physician and helper of suffering man. And that, indeed, is how I got my name of Chiron, for it mean 'He with the hands,' and by favour of the gods my hands have laid healing on many an aching head and many a throbbing wound. Marvel not, then, that I have learnt also to love the race of men; do you not know that as soon as you help any one, you begin to love him even against your will?"

As they talked thus together, they came to Chiron's dwelling, which was a long and lofty cavern near the top of the mountain. Here the wise Centaur had been born, and here had lived through many generations of mortal men. Clematis, with its purple blossoms, and dark glossy ivy hung like a rich curtain round the doorway, and close to the threshold a spring of living water welled from out the rock and sent a tiny rivulet across the level greensward, where mountain bees were humming over tufts of wild thyme. The rays of the sun, already drawing westward, lit up the portals of the cave; but far within Peleus could see a dusky, vaulted chamber opening into the very heart of the hill. Out of those dim recesses two figures, in shape like Chiron, came towards him with words of kindly greeting; they were Philyra and Chariclo, the mother and wife of the good Centaur. It seemed that they had known of his coming, for they had dressed him a supper of venison and strewed him a soft bed of grass and leaves covered with deerskins. At sunset the cave was already in darkness, save where a fire of pine logs glowed redly in the centre of its rocky floor, and the tired youth soon slept as soundly in that strange abode as he had ever done in kings' houses.

Chiron's cave, as he had said, was a lodging such as any hunter might desire. Peleus had his fill of hunting every day, and the Centaur taught him all manner of things that belong to woodcraft—the ways of all the wild things great and small, and the note of every bird, and the uses of every plant, and all the signs of the weather. Also he trained him skilfully in all manly exercises, in running and leaping and wrestling and throwing the spear, till he grew swift-footed as a stag, and supple-sinewed as a wildcat, and strong as a mountain bull. But when the dark winter came, and the north wind blew bitter cold through the snow-laden pines, Chiron had other lessons for his guest as they sat before a great fire of logs and fir-cones fashioning bows and arrows, or shaping and carving cups and platters of beechwood. Then he would tell of the brave deeds of famous heroes, some of whom he himself had known and taught in their youth; of Jason, whom he had brought up in that cavern from a child, and how he built the good ship Argo  with wood from that same forest, and sailed her from Iolcos far into unknown seas to find the Golden Fleece. And of another child, Asclepios, whose mother died at his birth, and how he was brought to him, like a lost lamb, in the arms of Hermes, the kind and merry shepherd-god. Chiron thought that the god's touch must have gifted that child with his own love for young and weakly creatures, for Asclepios would never go hunting, but delighted to find and care for baby beasts and birds that had strayed or got hurt. Of all the Centaur could teach him he loved best to learn the art of healing, and at last his skill became greater than his master's, and he went among the cities of men working such wondrous cures that after his death he was honoured as a god, and temples were dedicated to him, which were the first of all hospitals for the sick.

So the mind of Peleus was stored with examples of noble living, and with the wisdom which long experience had taught the good Centaur. Soon he grew to love his gentle teacher as a father, and to wonder more and more what had made him so different from the other Centaurs, who sometimes visited the cave, and who knew nothing, but lived the life of animals. One day he reminded him that he had never said how he came to know what befell in the palace of Acastus, "Have you been her so long," said Chiron, "and never noticed that I, like all my kindred, understand the language of those other children of Earth whom you call dumb? The birds of the air, I must tell you, are great gossips, and the swallows who nest under the palace eaves in Iolcos hear many things worth repeating to their friends the rock-martins, who lodge in the crevices of our rocks. But if you are wondering, as I think you are, why I alone of the Centaurs was not content with lawless, savage ways, but desired to learn wisdom and do the will of the gods, I will tell you a secret. I am not quite the same as the rest of my race, for I have a soul. Ah, Peleus, the life of the Centaurs is like the life of the forest trees, long and vigorous, but it ends at last, and then, like the trees when they fall, we sleep for ever in the lap of Earth. Only to me have the gods given an immortal soul such as they give to men. And having a soul has made me think of many things to which the other Centaurs pay no heed."

"That is very natural," said Peleus. After this, he grew even fonder of Chiron, because he had a soul, just like himself. And they lived happily till spring came to the forest.