It was no light task to provide shelter for nearly a thousand swine, with their young; yet Eumaeus had undertaken this duty during his master’s long absence, without the knowledge of Laertes or Penelope.  And here he was sitting, on this sunny morning, cutting up a well-tanned ox-hide to make straps for sandals, while four dogs, large and fierce as wolves, prowled near at hand.  Three of his helpers were gone with the swine to their feeding ground, and the fourth had been sent to the town with a fat hog for the wooers.

Suddenly the dogs rushed forward, baying furiously, and an old man in tattered raiment appeared at the gate of the courtyard.  It would have gone hard with the stranger if Eumaeus had not promptly come to the rescue, and driven the dogs off with a volley of stones.  “Old man,” said Eumaeus, as the dogs slunk away yelping, “it was well that I was near, or thou hadst surely been torn to pieces, and brought shame on me.  I have trouble enough without that.  Here I sit, fattening my master’s swine for other men’s tables, while he wanders, perchance, among strangers, in poverty and want.  But come into my hut, and when thou hast comforted thy soul with meat and wine thou shalt tell thy tale of sorrow.”

Odysseus (for he it was, though sorely disfigured) followed Eumaeus into the hut, and sat down on a shaggy goatskin, which the swineherd spread for him on a heap of brushwood.  “Heaven bless thee,” he said, when he was seated, “for this kindly welcome!” “I do but my duty,” answered Eumaeus.  “The stranger and the beggar are sacred, by law divine.  ’Tis but little that I can do, who serve young and haughty masters, in the absence of my true lord, who would have rewarded me nobly, and given me a plot of ground and a wife, had he been here to see how Heaven blesses the work of my hands.  But he is gone to swell the host of those who fell in Helen’s cause.  Cursed be she, and all her race, for she hath robbed me of the kindest master that ever man served.”

In the midst of his sorrow, Eumaeus forgot not his duties as host.  Going out he took two young swine, slaughtered and dressed them, and set the flesh, all smoking on the spits, before Odysseus.  Then he mixed wine in a bowl of ivy wood, and sitting down opposite to his guest bade him eat and drink.

“’Tis but poor fare which I have to offer you,” he said.  “The best of the herd ever goes to the young lords who are wooing my mistress.  Their wantonness and riot calls aloud to Heaven for vengeance.  They are worse than the wildest band of robbers that ever lived by open pillage and violence.  Such waste of good meat and wine was never seen before.  For a wealthy man was Odysseus, and his flocks and herds still range over all the hills of Ithaca.  And from every flock the fattest and the choicest is driven off day by day to feed their dainty mouths.”

Odysseus fell to with keen appetite, for he had eaten nothing since he left Phaeacia.  And when he had satisfied his hunger he pledged Eumaeus in a full cup, and led him on to discourse on his favourite theme—­the virtues and the sorrows of his lord.  “Tell me more,” he said, “of thy master.  Who knows but that I may have met him in my travels, for I have wandered in many lands.”