scarred limb, she knew
it by the touch, and grief and joy seized her, and she called him
Odysseus, her dear child. Then would she have revealed the glad news to
Penelope, had Odysseus not seized her by the throat and made her swear
to keep his presence secret until the slaying of the lordly wooers.

Next day occurs the famous trial of the bow of Odysseus, which none of
the suitors can draw; then Odysseus gets the bow into his hands, strings
it, sends the arrow through the axheads, and finally, leaping on the
stone threshold, deals his shafts among the wooers. The wretched
company are all slaughtered, the faithless women of the household are
hanged, and ominous silence reigns over the palace of Odysseus.

Euryclea hastens to the upper chamber to bring to Queen Penelope the
good news that Odysseus has surely come and has slain the haughty
wooers. The fair lady can with difficulty believe the tidings, but she
is finally persuaded to go down to see the wooers dead and him that slew
them.

"With the word, she went down from the upper chamber, and much her heart
debated whether she should stand apart and question her dear lord or
draw nigh and clasp his head and hands. But when she had come within and
had crossed the threshold of stone, she sat down over against Odysseus,
in the light of the fire, by the further wall. Now, he was sitting by
the tall pillar, looking down and waiting to know if perchance his noble
wife would speak to him, when her eyes beheld him. But she sat long in
silence, and amazement came upon her soul, and now she would look upon
him steadfastly with her eyes, and now again she knew him not, for that
he was clad in vile raiment. And Telemachus rebuked her, and spake and
hailed her:

"'Mother mine, ill mother, of an ungentle heart, why turnest thou thus
away from my father, and dost not sit by him and question him and ask
him all? No other woman in the world would harden her heart to stand
thus aloof from her lord, who, after much travail and sore, had come to
her in the twentieth year to his own country. But thy heart is ever
harder than stone.'

"Then wise Penelope answered him, saying: 'Child, my mind is amazed
within me, and I have no strength to speak, or to ask him aught, nay, or
to look on him face to face. But if in truth this be Odysseus, and he
hath indeed come home, verily we shall be aware of each other the more
surely; for we have tokens that we twain know of, even we, secret from
all o