Out of the stream beside him there rose a wondrous form of a maiden clad all in misty white.
Meanwhile, since the day when Priam had given his child to be exposed upon the mountains, many a circling year had passed, and the day drew near on which, if his son had lived, he would have held great games and feasted in honour of his reaching years of manhood. And Priam's heart within him smote him when he thought of the innocent babe, and he cast about in his mind how he yet might do him honour.
"Perchance I acted hastily," he thought, "and by care and good example my son might after all have been a blessing to his city and to me. But the dead are dead, and I cannot call him back to life. Yet will I honour him as best I may, that in the world below they may know he is a king's son and not utterly forgotten."
So he ordered great funeral games to be held in honour of his son, who had died without a name upon the mountains. Far and wide throughout the land the tidings went, and the lists were made ready, and rich prizes brought together for the victors. Among them was to be a bull, the strongest and finest from all the herds of Priam. The herdsmen drove down their finest cattle to the city for the king himself to chose, and he choose out a mighty beast which Agelaus had bred and reared. Now it chanced that this bull was the favourite of Paris out of all the cattle under his charge, and he loved him as some men love a dog. When he heard that Agelaus had given him to be a prize in the games, he waxed exceeding wrath.
"If he is to be any man's prize," he cried, "I shall be that man."
But Agelaus laughed at him.
"Who art thou," he said, "a foundling and a shepherd's foster-son, to enter in the lists against the sons of kings?"
"Sons of kings or sons of crows, I care not," he answered. "My arms are as strong and my feet are as swift as theirs any day. I shall enter for the lists."
The old man chuckled at his words, for he loved the lad, and was proud of his strength and beauty.