elen in
the ten years' war at Troy. Is it so hard to face the suitors in your own
house and home? Come, stand by me, and see if Mentor forgets old
friendship." Yet she left the victory still uncertain, that she might
prove his courage to the full. She turned herself into a swallow and flew
up into the roof and perched on a blackened rafter overhead.

Then the wooers took courage, when they saw that Mentor was gone, and that
the four stood alone in the doorway. And one of them said to the rest,
"Let six of us hurl our spears together at Ulysses. If once he falls,
there will be little trouble with the rest." So they flung their spears as
he bade them; but all of them missed the mark. Then Ulysses gave the word
to his men, and they all took steady aim and threw, and each one killed
his man; and the wooers fell back into the farther end of the hall, while
the four dashed on together and drew out their spears from the bodies of
the slain. Once more the suitors hurled, and Telemachus and the swineherd
were wounded; but the other spears fell wide. Then at last Athene lifted
her shield of war high overhead,--the shield that brings death to
men,--and panic seized the wooers, and they fled through the hall like a
drove of cattle when the gadfly stings them. But the four leapt on them
like vultures swooping from the clouds; and they fled left and right
through the hall, but there was no escape.

Only Phemius, the minstrel, whom the wooers had forced to sing before
them, sprang forward and clasped the knees of Ulysses and said, "Have
mercy on me, Ulysses: you would not slay a minstrel, who gladdens the
hearts of Gods and men? The princes forced me here against my will."

And Telemachus heard and said to his father, "Do not hurt him, for he is
not to blame: and let us save the herald too, if he is yet alive, for he
took care of me when I was a child."

Now the herald had hidden himself under a stool and pulled an ox-hide over
him, and when he heard this he crept out and clasped the knees of
Telemachus and begged that he would plead for him. "Have no fear," said
Ulysses; "my son has saved your life. Go out, you and the minstrel, and
wait in the courtyard, for I have other work to do within." So the two
went out into the courtyard, and sat down beside the altar, looking for
their death each moment.

Then Ulysses searched through the hall, to see if any one was yet lurking
alive. But they all lay round him fallen in the dust and bl