ns to the Goddess. Then Ulysses, when her back
was turned, slipped the gold phial out of his rags, and let it lie on
the polished floor beside him. When the priestess came back again, the
light from her torch fell on the glittering phial, and she stooped and
picked it up, and looked at it curiously. There came from it a sweet
fragrance, and she opened it, and tasted the drug. It seemed to her the
sweetest thing that ever she had tasted, and she took more and more, and
then closed the phial and laid it down, and went along murmuring her
hymn.

But soon a great drowsiness came over her, and she sat down on the step
of the altar, and fell sound asleep, and the torch sunk in her hand, and
went out, and all was dark. Then Ulysses put the phial in his wallet,
and crept very cautiously to the altar, in the dark, and stole the Luck
of Troy. It was only a small black mass of what is now called meteoric
iron, which sometimes comes down with meteorites from the sky, but it
was shaped like a shield, and the people thought it an image of the
warlike shielded Goddess, fallen from Heaven. Such sacred shields, made
of glass and ivory, are found deep in the earth in the ruined cities of
Ulysses' time. Swiftly Ulysses hid the Luck in his rags and left in its
place on the altar a copy of the Luck, which he had made of blackened
clay. Then he stole back to the place where he had lain, and remained
there till dawn appeared, and the sleepers who sought for dreams awoke,
and the temple gates were opened, and Ulysses walked out with the rest
of them.

He stole down a lane, where as yet no people were stirring, and crept
along, leaning on his staff, till he came to the eastern gate, at the
back of the city, which the Greeks never attacked, for they had never
drawn their army in a circle round the town. There Ulysses explained to
the sentinels that he had gathered food enough to last for a long
journey to some other town, and opened his bag, which seemed full of
bread and broken meat. The soldiers said he was a lucky beggar, and let
him out. He walked slowly along the waggon road by which wood was
brought into Troy from the forests on Mount Ida, and when he found that
nobody was within sight he slipped into the forest, and stole into a
dark thicket, hiding beneath the tangled boughs. Here he lay and slept
till evening, and then took the new clothes which Helen had given him
out of his wallet, and put them on, and threw the belt of the sword ove