Part 9 (2/2)

_Page 78_]

”My queen and Goddess, I know indeed that Penelope can never corow old and wrinkled, and o out to her, and I would endure a thousand storreat love for you, go, and s on you and protect you,” she said in a low voice, and her eyes were all blind with tears

On a red evening Calypso stood alone on a rock that jutted out into the sea

A black speck against the setting sun showed clear and far away

Then the night fell, and she wandered weeping through her scented avenues

But her heart ay on thesea, aith Ulysses the departed

THE LAST EPISODE

HOW THE KING CAME HOME AGAIN AFTER THE LONG YEARS

With the tears blinding his eyes, with shaking hands, speechless with the happy thoughts surging in his brain, Ulysses knelt and kissed the dear, dear shores of his own country

The sareatits head into the clouds, everywhere eternally the sa past?

How he heard the Sirens sing, seen the swaying arms of the foul Scylla, and dwelt in love and slumber with Calypso?

And by his side once more stood the Goddess, serene and beautiful in her benevolent but awful calm From her lips he had heard that here, even here in his own land, in the fields of his inheritance, one more supreme effort awaited him He had learnt how his palace was full of riotous princes, ooed his wife, the Queen Penelope He kne his son, the goodly Prince Telemachus, was least in his own house, and hoild revel and wantonness ate up his substance The queen in peril! Penelope all but given up to the desires of lust and greed All his great heart burnt with anger and hate against the suitors, and yet, with a strange dual eh with pride for his dear and stainless lady, who still ainst hope for his return

He kissed the kindly hoth and power ca toils and wanderings he had never known before

He beca to him ”And remember ever,

In all the chances of thy life before never hadst thou need to walk as warily as now Forwill avail one nothing against the hundred But at the hour of need I will be once e! son of Laertes! 'tis but a little while till the end Let not thy love and hate master thee until the appointed hour And now, that thou roves unknown for who thou art, I give thee a disguise And so farewell until the hour of triu The firs His hair shrivelled up into grey sparseness and his eyes di of shreds and patches, and an old beggar's staff of ilex was in his hand

But beneath this see and cunning as before

The Goddess turned into light and was nofootsteps Ulysses took a lonely way a the well-remembered paths of his native hills

After an hour's travelling he came out on a s a cluerly within hi years farain news of his palace and perhaps a friend

Eumaeus was once the steward of the estates and a very faithful servant of his e courtyard, hs, and within were twelve great pens for swine

And in the porch sat old Eued in a single feature, though perhaps his eyes were not so bright as in the old tis which herded the swine rushed out of the yard and leapt angrily at the newcoreat beasts were lean and evil-tempered, had not the swineherd ran out to his help and drew them off with curses

[Illustration: ”NAY, IF YOU LOVE ME,” HE SAID, ”NONE OF THAT, MY FRIEND”]