"Come quick. Thetis would have somewhat of thee."

And he said: "Verily, there is one in my house that was my saviour in the day of trouble; for my mother cast me out because I was lame, but Thetis and her sister received me in the sea. Nine years I dwelt with them, and hammered many a trinket in a hollow cave. Verily, I would pay the price of my life for Thetis."

Then he put away his tools, and washed himself, and took a staff in his hand, and came into the house, and sat upon a chair, and said: "Speak all thy mind. I will do thy pleasure, if it can be done."

Then did Thetis tell him of her son Achilles, and of the wrong that had been done to him, and of his wrath, and of how Patroclus was dead, and that the arms that he had had were lost.

"Make me now," she said, "for him a shield and a helmet, and greaves, and a corselet."

And Hephaestus answered: "Be of good cheer. Would that I could keep from him the doom of death as easily as I can make him

such arms that a man will wonder when he looks upon them."

Then he went to his smithy, and turned the bellows to the fire, and bade them work. Also he put bronze and tin and gold and silver into the fire, to melt them, and set the anvil, and took the hammer in one hand, and the tongs in the other.

First he made a shield, great and strong, and fastened thereto a belt of silver. On it he wrought the earth, and the sky, and the sea, and the sun, and the moon, and all the stars. He wrought also two cities. In the one there was peace, and about the other there was war. For in the first they led a bride to her home with music and dancing, and the women stood in the doors to see the show, and in the marketplace the judges judged about one that had been slain, and one man said that he had paid the price of blood, and the other denied. about the other city there sat an army besieging it, and the men of the city stood upon the wall defending it. These had also set an ambush by a river where the herds were wont to drink. And when the herds came down,

But

JOS memaer ms and into ང་《་《་ ་གནས་ ཚ་། means. mile he or stud fad at heart. Venting hem. As he wrought a vineyard. valeren vas i can. mi uths and maidens bearing baskets a grapes, and in the midst a buy playei în 1 barn i vid and sang a pleasant song As he made a herd of oxen going from the stables to the pastures, and herdsmen and dogs, and in the front two Sons had caught a mighty buil and were devouring it, while the dogs stood far cf and barked. Also he made a sheepfoid: also a marvellous dance of men and maidens, and these had coronets of gold, and those daggers of gold hanging from belts of silver. And round about the shield he wrought the great river of ocean.

Besides the shield, he also made a corselet brighter than fire, and a great helmet with a ridge of gold for the crest, and greaves of tin.