"What! My master and mistress live? Alas! my master is too kind a host." "Must I starve, then, because a strange girl is dead?" "It is no stranger, I tell thee, but one most near and dear." "Have I been deceived? Has he hidden some misfortune from me?" "Ask no more, but go in peace. My master's sorrows are for me to bear, not for thee. And he bade me not speak of it." "Speak, speak, man! I see he has hidden some great sorrow from me. Who is the woman who is dead?" "Ask me not. My master told me not to say." "And I forbid thee not to say. Tell me forthwith!" So fierce and terrible did he look that the old man trembled before him. "May my lord forgive me!" said he. "It is Alcestis, his wife." "Alcestis!" cried Heracles. "And he would not share his sorrow with me, his friend, but let me come in and feast and sing while he went out to bury her. Woe is me! I thought he loved me." "It was to spare thee pain that he did not tell thee, master." "How came she to die?" asked Heracles, and took off the vine-leaves from his head, and poured out the wine upon the floor. Then the old man told him the whole tale. "Where have they buried her?" he asked, when it was ended. "Out yonder, where the white highway leads to Larissa, in the plain. There, on the outskirts of the city, thou wilt find the tomb of the kings of Pheræ, where they are laying her." "Is there no shorter way I can go and reach her quickly?" "There is a footpath by the fields that I will show thee." "Come, then, straightway. I must go and lie in wait for the black Lord of Death. He will come up to drink of the blood that is poured out for him beside the tomb. Then I will fall upon him from my ambush and wrestle with him and prevail, and he shall give me back Alcestis. Even if I must go down to Hades and fetch her, she shall come back. She is too fair and too noble to pass her young life in the dark underworld." The old man marvelled at his words; but he went out with him, and showed him the footpath across the fields, and stood watching him till he passed out of sight. "Verily, we talk and weep," he muttered to himself, "and he laughs and acts. He is worth ten of us." XI Meanwhile the funeral procession was coming back along the highway. As they came into the city each man departed to his own house; only Admetus with his near friends and kinsmen returned to the palace to celebrate the funeral feast. Whilst they were waiting for the feast to be prepared, Admetus stayed outside alone in the court. He sat down on one of the stone seats beneath the colonnade, and buried his face in his hands. He could not bring himself to go into the house, where everything would remind him of the wife he had lost--the chair in which she used to sit, empty now; the fire on the altar burning low, and the ashes scattered about, because she was there no more to feed the dying flames. The full force of the sacrifice came home to him now, and he shuddered as he thought of the deed he had done.