t dress me again in my old rags, and take my wallet, and my
staff, and go forth, and beg through Troy town. For here I must abide
for some days as a beggar man, lest if I now escape from your house in
the night the Trojans may think that you have told me the secrets of
their counsel, which I am carrying to the Greeks, and may be angry with
you.' So he clothed himself again as a beggar, and took his staff, and
hid the phial of gold with the Egyptian drug in his rags, and in his
wallet also he put the new clothes that Helen had given him, and a
sword, and he took farewell, saying, 'Be of good heart, for the end of
your sorrows is at hand. But if you see me among the beggars in the
street, or by the well, take no heed of me, only I will salute you as a
beggar who has been kindly treated by a Queen.'

So they parted, and Ulysses went out, and when it was day he was with
the beggars in the streets, but by night he commonly slept near the fire
of a smithy forge, as is the way of beggars. So for some days he begged,
saying that he was gathering food to eat while he walked to some town
far away that was at peace, where he might find work to do. He was not
impudent now, and did not go to rich men's houses or tell evil tales, or
laugh, but he was much in the temples, praying to the Gods, and above
all in the temple of Pallas Athene. The Trojans thought that he was a
pious man for a beggar.

Now there was a custom in these times that men and women who were sick
or in distress, should sleep at night on the floors of the temples. They
did this hoping that the God would send them a dream to show them how
their diseases might be cured, or how they might find what they had
lost, or might escape from their distresses.

Ulysses slept in more than one temple, and once in that of Pallas
Athene, and the priests and priestesses were kind to him, and gave him
food in the morning when the gates of the temple were opened.

In the temple of Pallas Athene, where the Luck of Troy lay always on her
altar, the custom was that priestesses kept watch, each for two hours,
all through the night, and soldiers kept guard within call. So one night
Ulysses slept there, on the floor, with other distressed people, seeking
for dreams from the Gods. He lay still all through the night till the
turn of the last priestess came to watch. The priestess used to walk up
and down with bare feet among the dreaming people, having a torch in her
hand, and muttering hym