unwound by night, so that the task promised to be an endless one. Some of the handmaidens (who had found their own lovers, too, amongst their royal mistress's many suitors) had betrayed her secret. Antinous is gallant enough to add to this recital of Penelope's craft warm praises of the queen herself, even giving her full credit for the bright woman's wit which had so long baffled them all.
To weave the splendid web; sagacious thought,
And shrewdness such as never fame ascribed
To any beauteous Greek of ancient days,
Tyro, Mycene, or Alcmene, loved
Of Jove himself, all whom th' accomplished queen
Transcends in knowledge—ignorant alone
That, wooed long time, she should at last be won."—(Cowper.)
But they will now be put off no longer—she must make her choice, or they will never leave the house so long as she remains there unespoused. Telemachus indignantly refuses to send his mother home to her father; and repeats his passionate appeal to the gods for vengeance against the wrongs which he is himself helpless to deal with. At once an omen from heaven seems to betoken that the appeal is heard and accepted. Two eagles are seen flying over the heads of the crowd assembled in the marketplace, where they suddenly wheel round, and tear each other furiously with beak and talons. The soothsayer is at hand to interpret; the aged Halitherses, who reminds them all how he had foretold, when Ulysses first left his own shores for Troy, the twenty years that would elapse before his return. Now, he sees by this portent, the happy day is
