eseus lightly
sprang over them, carrying with him the Maceman's iron club. The path
now led downwards, and a burn that ran through a green forest kept him
company on the way, and brought him to pleasant farms and houses of men.

They marvelled to see him, a young man, carrying the club of the
Maceman. 'Did you find him asleep?' they asked, and Theseus smiled and
said, 'No, I found him awake. But now he sleeps an iron sleep, from
which he will never waken, and his body had due burning in his own
watchfire.' Then the men and women praised Theseus, and wove for him a
crown of leaves and flowers, and sacrificed sheep to the gods in heaven,
and on the meat they dined, rejoicing that now they could go to Troezene
by the hill path, for they did not love ships and the sea.

When they had eaten and drunk, and poured out the last cup of wine on
the ground, in honour of Hermes, the God of Luck, the country people
asked Theseus where he was going? He said that he was going to walk to
Athens, and at this the people looked sad. 'No man may walk across the
neck of land where Ephyre is built,' they said, 'because above it Sinis
the Pine-Bender has his castle, and watches the way.'

'And who is Sinis, and why does he bend pine trees?' asked Theseus.

'He is the strongest of men, and when he catches a traveller, he binds
him hand and foot, and sets him between two pine trees. Then he bends
them down till they meet, and fastens the traveller to the boughs of
each tree, and lets them spring apart, so that the man is riven
asunder.'

'Two can play at that game,' said Theseus, smiling, and he bade farewell
to the kind country people, shouldered the iron club of Periphetes, and
went singing on his way. The path led him over moors, and past
farm-houses, and at last rose towards the crest of the hill whence he
would see the place where two seas would have met, had they not been
sundered by the neck of land which is now called the Isthmus of Corinth.
Here the path was very narrow, with thick forests of pine trees on each
hand, and 'here,' thought Theseus to himself, 'I am likely to meet the
Pine-Bender.'

Soon he knew that he was right, for he saw the ghastly remains of dead
men that the pine trees bore like horrible fruit, and presently the air
was darkened overhead by the waving of vultures and ravens that prey
upon the dead. 'I shall fight the better in the shade,' said Theseus,
and he loosened the blade of the sword in its sheath, and