Thereupon said the false Mentor: "This is good, dear father. Let Telemachus abide with thee; but I will go back to the ship, and cheer the company, and tell them all. There I will sleep this night, and to-morrow I go to the Cauconians [Footnote: Cau-co'-ni- ans.], where there is owing to me a debt neither small nor of yesterday. But do thou send this man on his way in thy chariot."
Then the goddess departed in the semblance of a sea-eagle, and all that saw it were amazed.
Then the old man took Telemachus by the hand, and said: "No coward or weakling art thou like to be, whom the gods attend even now in thy youth. This is none other than Athene, daughter of Zeus, the same that stood by thy father in the land of Troy."
After this the old man led the company to his house. Here he mixed for them a bowl of wine eleven years old; and they prayed to Athene, and then lay down to sleep. Telemachus slept on a bedstead beneath the gallery, and Peisistratus slept by him.
The next day, as soon as it was morning, Nestor and his sons arose. And the old man said: "Let one man go to the plain for a heifer, and let another go to the ship of Telemachus, and bid all the company come hither, leaving two only behind. And a third shall command the goldsmith to gild the horns of the heifer, and let the handmaids prepare all things for a feast."
They did as the old man commanded; and after they had offered sacrifice, and had eaten and drunk, old Nester said, "Put now the horses in the chariot, that Telemachus may go his way."
So they yoked the horses, and the dame that kept the stores put into the chariot food and wine and dainties, such as princes eat. And Peisistratus took the reins, and Telemachus rode with him. And all that day they journeyed; and when the land grew dark they came to the city of Pherae [Footnote: Phe'-rae.], and there they rested; and the next day, travelling again, came to Lacedaemon [Footnote: La-ce-dae'-mon.], to the palace of King Menelaus.
CHAPTER IV
IN SPARTA
Now it chanced that Menelaus had made a great feast that day, for his daughter, the child of the fair Helen, was married to the son of Achilles, to whom she had been promised at Troy; and his son had also taken a wife. And the two wayfarers stayed their chariot at the door, and the steward spied them, and said to Menelaus:—