ojans. It was just like the tapestry at Bayeux on which Norman ladies
embroidered the battles in the Norman Conquest of England. Helen was
very fond of embroidering, like poor Mary, Queen of Scots, when a
prisoner in Loch Leven Castle. Probably the work kept both Helen and
Mary from thinking of their past lives and their sorrows.

[Illustration: HELEN POINTS OUT THE CHIEF HEROES IN THE GREEK HOST TO
PRIAM.]

When Helen heard that her husband was to fight Paris, she wept, and
threw a shining veil over her head, and with her two bower maidens went
to the roof of the gate tower, where king Priam was sitting with the old
Trojan chiefs. They saw her and said that it was small blame to fight
for so beautiful a lady, and Priam called her 'dear child,' and said, 'I
do not blame you, I blame the Gods who brought about this war.' But
Helen said that she wished she had died before she left her little
daughter and her husband, and her home: 'Alas! shameless me!' Then she
told Priam the names of the chief Greek warriors, and of Ulysses, who
was shorter by a head than Agamemnon but broader in chest and shoulders.
She wondered that she could not see her own two brothers, Castor and
Polydeuces, and thought that they kept aloof in shame for her sin; but
the green grass covered their graves, for they had both died in battle,
far away in Lacedaemon, their own country.

Then the lambs were sacrificed, and the oaths were taken, and Paris put
on his brother's armour: helmet, breastplate, shield, and leg-armour.
Lots were drawn to decide whether Paris or Menelaus should throw his
spear first, and, as Paris won, he threw his spear, but the point was
blunted against the shield of Menelaus. But when Menelaus threw his
spear it went clean through the shield of Paris, and through the side of
his breastplate, but only grazed his robe. Menelaus drew his sword, and
rushed in, and smote at the crest of the helmet of Paris, but his bronze
blade broke into four pieces. Menelaus caught Paris by the horsehair
crest of his helmet, and dragged him towards the Greeks, but the
chin-strap broke, and Menelaus turning round threw the helmet into the
ranks of the Greeks. But when Menelaus looked again for Paris, with a
spear in his hand, he could see him nowhere! The Greeks believed that
the beautiful goddess Aphrodite, whom the Romans called Venus, hid him
in a thick cloud of darkness and carried him to his own house, where
Helen of the fair hands found him an