ands.'

Then Odysseus came forward and said, 'Sirs, you do well to lay the bow
aside for to-day. But will you not put the bow into my hands, that I may
try to bend it, and judge for myself whether I have any of the strength
that once was mine?'

All the wooers were angry that a seeming beggar should attempt to bend
the bow that none of their company were able to bend; Antinous spoke to
him sharply and said:

'Thou wretched beggar! Is it not enough that thou art let into this high
hall to pick up scraps, but thou must listen to our speech and join in
our conversation? If thou shouldst bend that bow we will make short
shrift of thee, I promise. We will put thee on a ship and send thee over
to King Echetus, who will cut thee to pieces and give thy flesh to his
hounds.'

Old Eumaeus had taken up the bow. As he went with it to Odysseus some of
them shouted to him, 'Where art thou going with the bow, thou crazy
fellow? Put it down,' Eumaeus was confused by their shouts, and he put
down the bow.

Then Telemachus spoke to him and said, 'Eumaeus, beware of being the man
who served many masters.' Eumaeus, hearing these words, took it up again
and brought it to Odysseus, and put the bow into his hands.

As Odysseus stood in the doorway of the hall, the bow in his hands, and
with the arrows scattered at his feet, Eumaeus went to Eurycleia, and
told her to bar the door of the women's apartment at the back. Then
Philoetius, the cattleherd, went out of the hall and barred the gates
leading out of the courtyard.

For long Odysseus stood with the bow in his hands, handling it as a
minstrel handles a lyre when he stretches a cord or tightens a peg. Then
he bent the great bow; he bent it without an effort, and at his touch
the bow-string made a sound that was like the cry of a swallow. The
wooers seeing him bend that mighty bow felt, every man of them, a sharp
pain at the heart. They saw Odysseus take up an arrow and fit it to the
string. He held the notch, and he drew the string, and he shot the
bronze-weighted arrow straight through the holes in the back of the
axe-heads.

Then as Eumaeus took up the axes, and brought them outside, he said,
'Thou seest, lord Telemachus, that thy guest does not shame thee through
foolish boasting. I have bent the bow of Odysseus, and I have shot the
arrow aright. But now it is time to provide the feast for the lords who
woo thy lady mother. While it is yet light, the feast must be served to
th