h did
eat wheat steeped in water from my hand, and there came suddenly from
the clouds a crook-beaked hawk who soused on them and killed them all,
trussing their necks, then took his flight back up to the clouds. And
in my dream methought that I wept and made great moan for my fowls,
and for the destruction which the hawk had made; and my maids came
about me to comfort me. And in the height of my griefs the hawk came
back, and lighting upon the beam of my chamber, he said to me in a
man's voice, which sounded strangely even in my dream, to hear a hawk
to speak: Be of good cheer, he said, O daughter of Icarius! for this
is no dream which thou hast seen, but that which shall happen to thee
indeed. Those household fowl which thou lamentest so without reason,
are the suitors who devour thy substance, even as thou sawest the fowl
eat from thy hand, and the hawk is thy husband, who is coming to give
death to the suitors.--And I awoke, and went to see to my fowls if
they were alive, whom I found eating wheat from their troughs, all
well and safe as before my dream."

Then said Ulysses, "This dream can endure no other interpretation than
that which the hawk gave to it, who is your lord, and who is coming
quickly to effect all that his words told you."

"Your words," she said, "my old guest, are so sweet, that would you
sit and please me with your speech, my ears would never let my eyes
close their spheres for very joy of your discourse; but none that is
merely mortal can live without the death of sleep, so the gods who are
without death themselves have ordained it, to keep the memory of our
mortality in our minds, while we experience that as much as we live
we die every day: in which consideration I will ascend my bed, which
I have nightly watered with my tears since he that was the joy of it
departed for that bad city:" she so speaking, because she could not
bring her lips to name the name of Troy so much hated. So for that
night they parted, Penelope to her bed, and Ulysses to his son, and
to the armour and the lances in the hall, where they sat up all night
cleaning and watching by the armour.

CHAPTER X

_The madness from above.--The bow of Ulysses.--The slaughter.--The
conclusion._

When daylight appeared, a tumultuous concourse of the suitors again
filled the hall; and some wondered, and some inquired what meant that
glittering store of armour and lances which lay on heaps by the entry
of the door; and [t