nd kissed
his terrible death-dealing hands. "Have pity on me, and fear the Gods,
and give me back my dead son," he said, "and remember thine own father.
Have pity on me, who have endured to do what no man born has ever done
before, to kiss the hands that slew my sons."

Then Achilles remembered his own father, far away, who now was old and
weak: and he wept, and Priam wept with him, and then Achilles raised
Priam from his knees and spoke kindly to him, admiring how beautiful he
still was in his old age, and Priam himself wondered at the beauty of
Achilles. And Achilles thought how Priam had long been rich and happy,
like his own father, Peleus, and now old age and weakness and sorrow were
laid upon both of them, for Achilles knew that his own day of death was
at hand, even at the doors. So Achilles bade the women make ready the
body of Hector for burial, and they clothed him in a white mantle that
Priam had brought, and laid him in the wain; and supper was made ready,
and Priam and Achilles ate and drank together, and the women spread a bed
for Priam, who would not stay long, but stole away back to Troy while
Achilles was asleep.

All the women came out to meet him, and to lament for Hector. They
carried the body into the house of Andromache and laid it on a bed, and
the women gathered around, and each in turn sang her song over the great
dead warrior. His mother bewailed him, and his wife, and Helen of the
fair hands, clad in dark mourning raiment, lifted up her white arms, and
said: "Hector, of all my brethren in Troy thou wert the dearest, since
Paris brought me hither. Would that ere that day I had died! For this
is now the twentieth year since I came, and in all these twenty years
never heard I a word from thee that was bitter and unkind; others might
upbraid me, thy sisters or thy mother, for thy father was good to me as
if he had been my own; but then thou wouldst restrain them that spoke
evil by the courtesy of thy heart and thy gentle words. Ah! woe for
thee, and woe for me, whom all men shudder at, for there is now none in
wide Troyland to be my friend like thee, my brother and my friend!"

So Helen lamented, but now was done all that men might do; a great pile
of wood was raised, and Hector was burned, and his ashes were placed in a
golden urn, in a dark chamber of stone, within a hollow hill.

HOW ULYSSES STOLE THE LUCK OF TROY

After Hector was buried, the siege went on slowly, as it had