Lives of Alcyone

himself as a substitute. Vega joyously accepted him, and they were
married when they were just twenty, and lived the happiest of lives
together. Albireo loyally accepted Vega’ s decision, though he
suffered much at first. After some years, he consoled himself by
marrying another lady, Concord, but they had no children, and a little
later Albireo was killed in resisting one of the Toltec forays, so that
after all Alcyone became the heir, and stood in the position of which
he had feared that he was depriving her.
Alcyone and Vega had a large family—Sirius, the last and
youngest of the flock, being born when Alcyone was already fifty-
four years of age. Just at that time Neptune died, and Alcyone
inherited the vast estate, which he directed with much wisdom, for
while he kept the headship of the valley, and decided all cases
himself, he yet left the practical management of the land almost
entirely in the hands of his younger brothers Psyche and Leo, who
were in many ways better at details than he was himself. For thirty-
two years he held his position, hale, active and keen-sighted to the
last, outliving most of his contemporaries.
The brothers who had assisted him so ably died long before
him, but their place was filled by his eldest son Ulysses, who proved
a most capable manager. Through all this time his life flowed on
evenly, and on the whole happy, for the only variations were good
harvests or bad harvests, fine years or stormy ones, with occasional
rumours of Toltec raids. His children grew up and married, and he
saw his grandchildren and even his great-grandchildren around him,
and was always the best of friends and counsellors to all of them.
The great sorrows of his life were the deaths of Mercury and of
Vega, the latter fortunately taking place only a little before his own.