polished floor beside him. When the priestess came back again, the light
from her torch fell on the glittering phial, and she stooped and picked
it up, and looked at it curiously. There came from it a sweet fragrance,
and she opened it, and tasted the drug. It seemed to her the sweetest
thing that ever she had tasted, and she took more and more, and then
closed the phial and laid it down, and went along murmuring her hymn.

But soon a great drowsiness came over her, and she sat down on the step
of the altar, and fell sound asleep, and the torch sunk in her hand, and
went out, and all was dark. Then Ulysses put the phial in his wallet,
and crept very cautiously to the altar, in the dark, and stole the Luck
of Troy. It was only a small black mass of what is now called meteoric
iron, which sometimes comes down with meteorites from the sky, but it was
shaped like a shield, and the people thought it an image of the warlike
shielded Goddess, fallen from Heaven. Such sacred shields, made of glass
and ivory, are found deep in the earth in the ruined cities of Ulysses'
time. Swiftly Ulysses hid the Luck in his rags and left in its place on
the altar a copy of the Luck, which he had made of blackened clay. Then
he stole back to the place where he had lain, and remained there till
dawn appeared, and the sleepers who sought for dreams awoke, and the
temple gates were opened, and Ulysses walked out with the rest of them.

He stole down a lane, where as yet no people were stirring, and crept
along, leaning on his staff, till he came to the eastern gate, at the
back of the city, which the Greeks never attacked, for they had never
drawn their army in a circle round the town. There Ulysses explained to
the sentinels that he had gathered food enough to last for a long journey
to some other town, and opened his bag, which seemed full of bread and
broken meat. The soldiers said he was a lucky beggar, and let him out.
He walked slowly along the waggon road by which wood was brought into