“Your wings are coloured like the rainbow!” exclaimed Pandora.  “How very beautiful!”

“Yes, they are like the rainbow,” said Hope, “because, glad as my nature is, I am partly made of tears as well as smiles.”

“And will you stay with us,” asked Epimetheus, “forever and ever?”

“As long as you need me,” said Hope, with her pleasant smile—­“and that will be as long as you live in the world—­I promise never to desert you.  There may come times and seasons, now and then, when you will think that I have utterly vanished.  But again, and again, and again, when perhaps you least dream of it, you shall see the glimmer of my wings on the ceiling of your cottage.  Yes, my dear children, and I know something very good and beautiful that is to be given you hereafter!”

“Oh tell us,” they exclaimed—­“tell us what it is!”

“Do not ask me,” replied Hope, putting her finger on her rosy mouth.  “But do not despair, even if it should never happen while you live on this earth.  Trust in my promise, for it is true.”

“We do trust you!” cried Epimetheus and Pandora, both in one breath.

And so they did; and not only they, but so has everybody trusted Hope, that has since been alive.  And to tell you the truth, I cannot help being glad—­(though, to be sure, it was an uncommonly naughty thing for her to do)—­but I cannot help being glad that our foolish Pandora peeped into the box.  No doubt—­no doubt—­the Troubles are still flying about the world, and have increased in multitude, rather than lessened, and are a very ugly set of imps, and carry most venomous stings in their tails.  I have felt them already, and expect to feel them more, as I grow older.  But then that lovely and lightsome little figure of Hope!  What in the world could we do without her?  Hope spiritualises the earth; Hope makes it always new; and, even in the earth’s best and brightest aspect, Hope shows it to be only the shadow of an infinite bliss hereafter!

CHAPTER IX

THE CYCLOPS

When the great city of Troy was taken, all the chiefs who had fought against it set sail for their homes.  But there was wrath in heaven against them, for indeed they had borne themselves haughtily and cruelly in the day of their victory.  Therefore they did not all find a safe and happy return.  For one was shipwrecked, and another was shamefully slain by his false wife in his palace, and others found all things at home troubled and changed, and were driven to seek new dwellings elsewhere.  And some, whose wives and friends and people had been still true to them through those ten long years of absence, were driven far and wide about the world before they saw their native land again.  And of all, the wise Ulysses was he who wandered farthest and suffered most.

He was well-nigh the last to sail, for he had tarried many days to do pleasure to Agamemnon, lord of all the Greeks.  Twelve ships he had with him—­twelve he had brought to Troy—­and in each there were some fifty men, being scarce half of those that had sailed in them in the old days, so many valiant heroes slept the last sleep by Simois and Scamander, and in the plain and on the seashore, slain in battle or by the shafts of Apollo.