Fair Helen than with Paris, for they felt assured that the queen had
been lured from her country and out of her own senses by some spell of
enchantment. So they took counsel how they might bring back Fair Helen
to her home and husband.

Years had come and gone since that wedding-feast when Eris had flung
the apple of discord, like a firebrand, among the guests. But the spark
of dissension that had smouldered so long burst into flame now, and,
fanned by the enmities of men and the rivalries of the gods, it seemed
like to fire heaven and earth.

A few of the heroes answered the call to arms unwillingly. Time had
reconciled them to the loss of Fair Helen, and they were loath to leave
home and happiness for war, even in her cause.

One of these was Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who had married Penelope,
and was quite content with his kingdom and his little son Telemachus.
Indeed, he was so unwilling to leave them that he feigned madness in
order to escape service, appeared to forget his own kindred, and went
ploughing the seashore and sowing salt in the furrows. But a messenger,
Palamedes, who came with the summons to war, suspected that this sudden
madness might be a stratagem, for the king was far famed as a man of
many devices. He therefore stood by, one day (while Odysseus,
pretending to take no heed of him, went ploughing the sand), and he
laid the baby Telemachus directly in the way of the ploughshare. For
once the wise man's craft deserted him. Odysseus turned the plough
sharply, caught up the little prince, and there his fatherly wits were
manifest! After this he could no longer play madman. He had to take
leave of his beloved wife Penelope and set out to join the heroes,
little dreaming that he was not to return for twenty years. Once