y before me will be able to avoid it.'

[Illustration.]

So saying, the second-sighted man went out of the hall. The wooers
looking at each other laughed again, and one of them said:

'Telemachus has no luck in his guests. One is a dirty beggar, who thinks
of nothing but what he can put from his hand into his mouth, and the
other wants to stand up here and play the seer.' So the wooers spake in
mockery, but neither Telemachus nor Odysseus paid heed to their words,
for their minds were bent upon the time when they should take vengeance
upon them.

XIV

In the treasure-chamber of the house Odysseus' great bow was kept. That
bow had been given to him by a hero named Iphitus long ago. Odysseus had
not taken it with him when he went to the wars of Troy.

To the treasure-chamber Penelope went. She carried in her hand the great
key that opened the doors--a key all of bronze with a handle of ivory.
Now as she thrust the key into the locks, the doors groaned as a bull
groans. She went within, and saw the great bow upon its peg. She took it
down and laid it upon her knees, and thought long upon the man who had
bent it.

Beside the bow was its quiver full of bronze-weighted arrows. The
servant took the quiver and Penelope took the bow, and they went from
the treasure-chamber and into the hall where the wooers were.

When she came in she spoke to the company and said: 'Lords of Ithaka and
of the islands around: You have come here, each desiring that I should
wed him. Now the time has come for me to make my choice of a man from
amongst you. Here is how I shall make choice.'

'This is the bow of Odysseus, my lord who is no more. Whosoever amongst
you who can bend this bow and shoot an arrow from it through the holes
in the backs of twelve axes which I shall have set up, him will I wed,
and to his house I will go, forsaking the house of my wedlock, this
house so filled with treasure and substance, this house which I shall
remember in my dreams.'

As she spoke Telemachus took the twelve axes and set them upright in an
even line, so that one could shoot an arrow through the hole that was in
the back of each axe-head. Then Eumaeus, the old swineherd, took the bow
of Odysseus, and laid it before the wooers.

One of the wooers took up the bow and tried to bend it. But he could not
bend it, and he laid it down at the doorway with the arrow beside it.
The others took up the bow, and warmed it at the fire, and rubbed it
wi