And Hephæstus 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, but 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, they rose up and took them and slew the herdsmen. But the army of the besiegers heard the cry, and came swiftly on horses, and fought by the bank of the river. Also he wrought one field where many men drove the plough, and another where reapers reaped the corn, and boys gathered it in their arms to bind into sheaves, while the lord stood glad at heart, beholding them. Also he wrought a vineyard, wherein was a path, and youths and maidens bearing baskets of grapes, and in the midst a boy played on a harp of gold and sang a pleasant song. Also he made a herd of oxen going from the stables to the pastures, and herdsmen and dogs, and in the front two lions had caught a mighty bull and were devouring it, while the dogs stood far off and barked. Also he made a sheepfold; 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 corselet brighter than fire, and a great helmet with a ridge of gold for the crest, and greaves of tin. And when he had finished all the armour, he set them before the mother of Achilles. Like to a hawk did she leap from Olympus, carrying them to her son. And when she came to the ships, she found him lying on the earth with his arms about the body of Patroclus, weeping aloud, and his men stood about lamenting. The goddess stood in the midst, and clasped her son by the hand, and spake: "Come, now, let us leave the dead man; for he hath been slain according to the ordering of the gods. And do thou receive from Hephæstus this armour, exceeding beautiful, such as man never yet wore upon his shoulders."