it befell that he was present one day at a contest between Pan and Apollo himself. It was a day of merry-making for nymphs and fauns and dryads, and all those who lived in the lonely solitudes of Phrygia came to listen to the music of the god who ruled them. For as Pan sat in the shade of a forest one night and piped on his reeds until the very shadows danced, and the water of the stream by which he sat leapt high over the mossy stones it passed, and laughed aloud in its glee, the god had so gloried in his own power that he cried:
"Who speaks of Apollo and his lyre? Some of the gods may be well pleased with his music, and mayhap a bloodless man or two. But my music strikes to the heart of the earth itself. It stirs with rapture the very sap of the trees, and awakes to life and joy the innermost soul of all things mortal."
Apollo heard his boast, and heard it angrily.
"Oh, thou whose soul is the soul of the untilled ground!" he said, "wouldst thou place thy music, that is like the wind in the reeds, beside my music, which is as the music of the spheres?"
And Pan, splashing with his goat's feet amongst the water-lilies of the stream on the bank of which he sat, laughed loudly and cried:
"Yea, would I, Apollo! I Willingly would I play thee a match—thou on thy golden lyre—I on my reeds from the river."
Thus did it come to pass that Apollo and Pan matched against each other their music, and King Midas was one of the judges.
