without armour, walked into the space between the hosts, and challenged
any Greek prince to single combat. Menelaus, whose wife Paris had
carried away, was as glad as a hungry lion when he finds a stag or a
goat, and leaped in armour from his chariot, but Paris turned and slunk
away, like a man when he meets a great serpent on a narrow path in the
hills. Then Hector rebuked Paris for his cowardice, and Paris was
ashamed and offered to end the war by fighting Menelaus. If he himself
fell, the Trojans must give up Helen and all her jewels; if Menelaus
fell, the Greeks were to return without fair Helen. The Greeks accepted
this plan, and both sides disarmed themselves to look on at the fight in
comfort, and they meant to take the most solemn oaths to keep peace till
the combat was lost and won, and the quarrel settled. Hector sent into
Troy for two lambs, which were to be sacrificed when the oaths were
taken.

In the meantime Helen of the fair hands was at home working at a great
purple tapestry on which she embroidered the battles of the Greeks and
Trojans. It was just like the tapestry at Bayeux on which Norman ladies
embroidered the battles in the Norman Conquest of England. Helen was
very fond of embroidering, like poor Mary, Queen of Scots, when a
prisoner in Loch Leven Castle. Probably the work kept both Helen and
Mary from thinking of their past lives and their sorrows.

When Helen heard that her husband was to fight Paris, she wept, and threw
a shining veil over her head, and with her two bower maidens went to the
roof of the gate tower, where king Priam was sitting with the old Trojan
chiefs. They saw her and said that it was small blame to fight for so
beautiful a lady, and Priam called her "dear child," and said, "I do not
blame you, I blame the Gods who brought about this war." But Helen said
that she wished she had died before she left her little daughter and her