Once or twice, in her darkest hours, she had longed and prayed for such a day as this—for fate to send some Hellenic victim to her altar. She had thought she would be glad: that it would be a keen and satisfying pleasure to take a Greek life for all that the Greeks had made her suffer. But now that she stands face to face with her desire, there is a tumult of emotion within her in which bitterness hardly shares. She questions the herdsman closely of the name and appearance of the strangers. One is called Pylades, he says; but the other’s name he did not catch. And at Iphigenia’s command, he goes over the whole story of their capture. He and his companions were washing their cattle in the sea, when one of them had spied two strangers sitting on the beach in a little bay. They were young, handsome and apparently noble; and there was something in their fine physique and sudden unaccountable appearance in that lonely spot which made one of his fellows cry out that they were gods. But another jeered and said most likely they were shipwrecked sailors who knew the custom of the country and were trying to escape it; and just at that moment a strange thing happened. One of the youths was suddenly seized with a fit of madness. They saw him spring from his seat and beat his head up and down, while he shrieked wildly to his comrade: “_Pylades, Dost see her there?—And there.—Oh, no one sees!— A she-dragon of Hell, and all her head Agape with fangèd asps, to bite me dead!_“[33] The distraught fancy of Orestes saw the cattle and their watch-dogs as the pursuing Furies of his mother; and quick as a flash, before his friend could intervene, he had drawn his sword and was slashing right and left amongst the helpless beasts. The herdsmen blew their horns; and soon a crowd had gathered and were pelting the strangers with stones. While the fit of madness lasted Pylades guarded Orestes from attack; but it passed quickly, and the two youths fought together gallantly for life. Not one of the missiles struck home, the goddess, it seemed, taking care to save her prey. But at last they were surrounded, and the swords beaten out of their hands. “_Then to the king We bore them both, and he, not tarrying, Sends them to thee, to touch with holy spray— And then the blood-bowl._“[33]