And they ran the ship ashore; but they had no strength left to haul her up the beach; and they crawled out on the pebbles, and sat down, and wept till they could weep no more. For the houses and the trees were all altered; and all the faces which they saw were strange; and their joy was swallowed up in sorrow, while they thought of their youth, and all their labour, and the gallant comrades they had lost. And the people crowded round, and asked them ‘Who are you, that you sit weeping here?’ ‘We are the sons of your princes, who sailed out many a year ago. We went to fetch the golden fleece, and we have brought it, and grief therewith. Give us news of our fathers and our mothers, if any of them be left alive on earth.’ Then there was shouting, and laughing, and weeping; and all the kings came to the shore, and they led away the heroes to their homes, and bewailed the valiant dead. Then Jason went up with Medeia to the palace of his uncle Pelias. And when he came in Pelias sat by the hearth, crippled and blind with age; while opposite him sat Æson, Jason’s father, crippled and blind likewise; and the two old men’s heads shook together as they tried to warm themselves before the fire. And Jason fell down at his father’s knees, and wept, and called him by his name. And the old man stretched his hands out, and felt him, and said, ‘Do not mock me, young hero. My son Jason is dead long ago at sea.’ ‘I am your own son Jason, whom you trusted to the Centaur upon Pelion; and I have brought home the golden fleece, and a princess of the Sun’s race for my bride. So now give me up the kingdom, Pelias my uncle, and fulfil your promise as I have fulfilled mine.’ Then his father clung to him like a child, and wept, and would not let him go; and cried, ‘Now I shall not go down lonely to my grave. Promise me never to leave me till I die.’ PART VI WHAT WAS THE END OF THE HEROES And now I wish that I could end my story pleasantly; but it is no fault of mine that I cannot. The old songs end it sadly, and I believe that they are right and wise; for though the heroes were purified at Malea, yet sacrifices cannot make bad hearts good, and Jason had taken a wicked wife, and he had to bear his burden to the last. And first she laid a cunning plot to punish that poor old Pelias, instead of letting him die in peace. For she told his daughters, ‘I can make old things young again; I will show you how easy it is to do.’ So she took an old ram and killed him, and put him in a cauldron with magic herbs; and whispered her spells over him, and he leapt out again a young lamb. So that ‘Medeia’s cauldron’ is a proverb still, by which we mean times of war and change, when the world has become old and feeble, and grows young again through bitter pains.