When anger and shame had had their turn, other and more pressing anxieties came crowding upon him, banishing sleep from his eyelids.  How was he with such help as Telemachus could give him to overpower and slay a hundred men in the prime of their youth and strength?  It seemed an impossible feat, and his heart quaked within him as he counted those fearful odds.

At last sleep came upon him unawares, and in a dream he saw his divine friend and helper, Athene, standing by him, robed in awful beauty.  “Where is thy faith?” she asked, in sweet and solemn tones.  “Dost thou doubt my power to help thee?  Know this, that with me at thy side thou couldst rout and slay a thousand armed men.  Sleep on, then, and vex thyself no more; in a few short hours all thy trials shall be passed, and thou shalt rest in triumph under thine own roof-tree.”  Then she touched his brow with her finger, and departed; and after that he slept on soundly until dawn.

In the first grey light of morning he awoke, roused by a sound as of one wailing within the house.  He sat up in his bed and listened:  it was the voice of Penelope, his wife; for she too had had her dreams, sweet, indeed, while they lasted, but bitter to her waking memory.  She thought that her husband came to her, in all the glory of his manhood, even as when he set out for Troy, and put his arms about her, and kissed her tenderly.  Therefore she wept and wailed, thinking that it was another false vision, sent by some hostile deity to mock her widowhood.

What a sound was that for the lonely watcher before the house!  “Patience, fond, sad heart!” he murmured to himself, “this very night thou shalt hold me in thine arms, and sob out thy sorrows on my breast.”  With that he rose to his feet, and lifting up his hands to heaven put up a prayer to Zeus:  “Dread sire of gods, if with good will ye have brought me thus far, after so many perils by land and by water, send me a sign from heaven, and reveal unto me your purpose by the lips of one of those that be within the house.”

A loud peal of thunder was heard in answer to his prayer; and a second sign was sent by the voice of a woman in the house.  She was one of twelve maid-servants, whose duty it was to grind wheat and barley for the daily supply of bread.  The others had finished their task, but she, being old and weak, was still toiling at her mill.  When she heard the thunder she stopped for a moment, and thus uttered her complaint:  “Thunder in a clear sky!  That bodes ill to some that be here.  Heaven grant that it may be to the wooers, for whom day by day I suffer this cruel toil, making meal for them!  May this be the very last time that they sit down to meat in this house!” So saying, she returned to her labour, and Odysseus rejoiced at the double sign which had been vouchsafed to him.