ide far in
the darkness of the cave, under the olive-tree, all the gold and
bronze ornaments and beautiful clothes that had been given to him in
the land of Nausicaa.

Then she touched him with her golden wand. In a moment his yellow hair
fell off his head; his bright eyes were dim; his skin was withered and
wrinkled, and he had a stooping back and tottering legs like a feeble
old man. His clothes of purple and silver she changed into torn and
filthy old rags, and over his shoulders she threw the old skin of a
stag with the hair worn off.

"Go now," said Athene, "to where thy faithful swineherd sits on the
hill, watching his swine as they grub among the acorns and drink of
the clear spring. He has always been true to thee and to thy wife and
son. Stay with him and hear all that he has to tell, and I will go and
fetch home Telemachus."

"When thou didst know all, why didst thou not tell Telemachus?" asked
Odysseus. "Is he, too, to go wandering over stormy seas, far from his
own land?"

"Telemachus will be a braver man for what he has gone through," said
Athene. "No harm shall come to him, although the wooers in their black
ship wait to slay him."

Then Athene flew across the sea, and Odysseus climbed up a rough track
through the woods to where the swineherd had built himself a hut. The
hut was made of stones and thorn-branches, and beside it were sties
for the swine made in the same way. The wooers had eaten many swine at
their daily feasts, but thousands remained. These the swineherd
tended, with three men and four fierce dogs to help him.

At an open space on the hill, from whence he could look down at the
woods and the sea, Odysseus found the swineherd sitting at the door of
his hut making himself a pair of sandals out of brown ox-hide.

When the swineherd's dogs saw a dirty, bent old man toiling up the
hill, they rushed at him, barking furiously. Up they leapt on him and
would have torn him to pieces if their master had not cast away his
ox-hide, dashed after them, scolded them and beaten them, and then
driven them off with showers of stones.

"If my dogs had killed thee I should have been for ever ashamed," he
said to Odysseus, "and without that I have enough sorrow. For while my
noble master may be wandering in a strange land and lacking food, I
have to feed his fat swine for others to eat."

So speaking, he led Odysseus to his hut. He laid some brushwood on the
floor, spread over it the soft, shaggy sk