ated themselves there, and a maid brought water in a golden ewer and
poured it over their hands into a silver basin. Then a polished table
was put beside them, and the housedame placed bread and meat and wine
upon it so that they might eat.

Menelaus came to where they sat and said to Telemachus and Peisistratus,
'By your looks I know you to be of the line of Kings. Eat now, and when
you have refreshed yourselves I will ask who you are and from what place
you come.'

But before they had finished their meal, and while yet Menelaus the king
was showing them the treasures that were near, the lady Helen came into
the high hall--Helen for whom the Kings and Princes of Greece had gone
to war. Her maids were with her, and they set a chair for her near where
Menelaus was and they put a rug of soft wool under her feet. Then one
brought to her a silver basket filled with colored yarn. And Helen sat
in her high chair and took the distaff in her hands and worked the yarn.
She questioned Menelaus about the things that had happened during the
day, and as she did she watched Telemachus.

Then the lady Helen left the distaff down and said, 'Menelaus, I am
minded to tell you who one of these strangers is. No one was ever more
like another than this youth is like great-hearted Odysseus. I know that
he is no other than Telemachus, whom Odysseus left as a child, when, for
my sake, the Greeks began their war against Troy.'

Then said Menelaus, 'I too mark his likeness to Odysseus. The shape of
his head, the glance of his eye, remind me of Odysseus. But can it
indeed be that Telemachus has come into my house?'

'Renowned Menelaus,' said Peisistratus, 'this is indeed the son of
Odysseus. And I avow myself to be the son of another comrade of yours,
of Nestor, who was with you at the war of Troy. I have been sent with
Telemachus to be his guide to your house.'

Menelaus rose up and clasped the hand of Telemachus. 'Never did there
come to my house,' said he, 'a youth more welcome. For my sake did
Odysseus endure much toil and many adventures. Had he come to my country
I would have given him a city to rule over, and I think that nothing
would have parted us, one from the other. But Odysseus, I know, has not
returned to his own land of Ithaka.'

Then Telemachus, thinking upon his father, dead, or wandering through
the world, wept. Helen, too, shed tears, remembering things that had
happened. And Menelaus, thinking upon Odysseus and on all h