Then Ulysses gave a sign to his son, and he commanded the doors of the hall to be made fast; and all wondered at his words, but none could divine the cause. And Ulysses took the bow into his hands; and, before he essayed to bend it, he surveyed it at all parts, to see whether, by long lying by, it had contracted any stiffness which hindered the drawing: and, as he was busied in the curious surveying of his bow, some of the suitors mocked him, and said, Past doubt, this man is a right cunning archer, and knows his craft well. See how he turns it over and over, and looks into it, as if he could see through the wood!" And others said, "We wish some one would tell out gold into our laps but for so long a time as he shall be in drawing that string." But when he had spent some little time in making proof of the bow, and had found it to be in good plight, like as a harper in tuning his harp draws out a string, with such ease or much more did Ulysses draw to the head the string of his own tough bow; and, in letting it go, it twanged with such a shrill noise as a swallow makes when it sings through the air which so much amazed the suitors, that their colour came and went, and the skies gave out a noise of thunder, which at heart cheered Ulysses; for he knew that now his long labours, by the disposal of the Fates, drew to an end. Then fitted he an arrow to the bow; and, drawing it to the head, he sent it right to the mark which the prince had set up. Which done, he said to Telemachus, "You have got no disgrace yet by your guest; for I have struck the mark I shot at, and gave myself no such trouble in teasing the bow with fat and fire as these men did, but have made proof that my strength is not impaired, nor my age so weak and contemptible as these were pleased to think it. But come the day going down calls us to supper; after which

succeed poem and harp, and all delights which used to crown princely banquetings."

So saying, he beckoned to his son, who straight girt his sword to his side, and took one of the lances (of which there lay great store from the armoury) in his hand, and, armed at all points, advanced towards his father.

The upper rags which Ulysses wore fell from his shoulder, and his own kingly likeness returned; when he rushed to the great hall-door with bow and quiver full of shafts, which down at his feet he poured, and in bitter words presignified his deadly intent to the suitors. "Thus far, he said, "this contest has been decided harmless: now for us there rests another mark, harder to hit, but which my hands shall essay notwithstanding, if Phoebus, god of archers, be pleased to give me the mastery." With that he let fly a deadly arrow at Antinous, which pierced him in the throat, as he was in the act of lifting a cup of wine to his mouth. Amazement seized the suitors as their great champion fell dead; and they raged highly against Ulysses, and said that it should prove the dearest shaft which he had ever let fly; for he had slain a man whose like breathed not in any part of the kingdom: and they flew to their arms, and would have seized the lances; but Minerva struck them with dimness of sight, that they went erring up and down the hall, not knowing where to find them. Yet so infatuated were they by the displeasure of Heaven, that they did not see the imminent peril which impended over them; but every man believed that this accident had happened beside the intention of the doer. Fools! to think by shutting their eyes to evade destiny, or that any other cup remained for them but that which their great Antinous had tasted!

Then Ulysses revealed himself to all of them, and told them that he was the man whom they thought

was dead at Troy, whose palace they had usurped, whose wife in his lifetime they had sought in impious marriage, and that for this reason destruction was come upon them. And he dealt his deadly arrows among them, and there was no avoiding him, nor escaping from his horrid person; and Telemachus by his side plied them thick with those murderous lances from which there was no retreat, till fear itself made them valiant, and danger gave them eyes to understand the peril. Then they which had swords drew them, and some with shields that they had found, and some with tables and benches snatched up in haste, rose in a mass to overwhelm and crush those two; yet they singly bestirred themselves like men, and defended themselves against that great host; and through tables, shields, and all, right through, the arrows of Ulysses clove, and the irresistible lances of Telemachus; and many lay dead, and all had wounds. And Minerva, in the likeness of a bird, sate upon the beam which went across the hall, clapping her wings with a fearful noise and sometimes the great bird would fly among them, cuffing at the swords and at the lances, and up and down the hall would go, beating her wings, and troubling every thing, that it was frightful to behold; and it frayed the blood from the cheeks of those heaven-hated suitors. But to Ulysses and his son she appeared in her own divine similitude, with her snake-fringed shield, a goddess armed, fighting their battles. Nor did that dreadful pair desist till they had laid all their foes at their feet. At their feet they lay in shoals: like fishes when the fishermen break up their nets, so they lay gasping and sprawling at the feet of Ulysses and his son. Ulysses remembered the prediction of Tiresias, which said that he was to perish by his own guests, unless he slew those who knew him not.

And

Then certain of the queen's household went up,

and told Penelope what had happened; and how her lord Ulysses was come home, and had slain the suitors. But she gave no heed to their words, but thought that some frenzy possessed them, or that they mocked her; for it is the property of such extremes of sorrow as she had felt not to believe when any great joy cometh. And she rated and chid them exceedingly for troubling her. But they the more persisted in their asseverations of the truth of what they had affirmed; and some of them had seen the slaughtered bodies dragged forth of the hall. And they said, "That poor guest, whom you talked with last night, was Ulysses." Then she was yet more fully persuaded that they mocked her; and she wept. But they said, "This thing is true which we have told. We sat within, in an inner room in the palace and the doors of the hall were shut on us : but we heard the cries and the groans of the men that were killed, but saw nothing, till at length your son called to us to come in; and, entering, we saw Ulysses standing in the midst of the slaughtered." But she, persisting in her unbelief, said that it was some god which had deceived them to think it was the person of Ulysses.

By this time Telemachus and his father had cleansed their hands from the slaughter, and were come to where the queen was talking with those of her household; and when she saw Ulysses she stood motionless, and had no power to speak,-sudden surprise and joy and fear and many passions so strove within her. Sometimes she was clear that it was her husband that she saw, and sometimes the alteration which twenty years had made in his person (yet that was not much) so perplexed her, that she knew not what to think, and for joy she could not believe, and yet for joy she would not but believe; and, above all, that sudden change from a beggar to a king troubled her, and wrought uneasy scruples

in her mind. But Telemachus, seeing her strangeness, blamed her, and called her an ungentle and tyrannous mother; and said that she showed a too great curiousness of modesty to abstain from embracing his father, and to have doubts of his person, when, to all present, it was evident that he was the very real and true Ulysses.

Then she mistrusted no longer; but ran and fell upon Ulysses's neck, and said, "Let not my husband be angry that I held off so long with strange delays: it is the gods, who severing us for so long time, have caused this unseemly distance in me. If Menelaus's wife had used half my caution, she would never have taken so freely to a stranger's bed; and she might have spared us all these plagues which have come upon us through her shameless deed."

These words, with which Penelope excused herself, wrought more affection in Ulysses than if, upon a first sight, she had given up herself implicitly to his embraces; and he wept for joy to possess a wife so discreet, so answering to his own staid mind, one that had a depth of wit proportioned to his own, and one that held chaste virtue at so high a price. And he thought the possession of such a one cheaply purchased with the loss of all Circe's delights and Calypso's immortality of joys; and his long labours and his severe sufferings past seemed as nothing, now they were crowned with the enjoyment of his virtuous and true wife, Penelope. And as sad men at sea, whose ship has gone to pieces nigh shore, swimming for their lives, all drenched in foam and brine, crawl up to some poor patch of land, which they take possession of with as great a joy as if they had the world given them in fee, with such delight did this chaste wife cling to her lord restored, till the dark night fast coming on reminded her of that more intimate and happy union, when, in her long-widowed bed, she should once again clasp a living Ulysses.