been a sailor. I think I will go to the cottage
with you."

"Yes," said little Ulick, "come up and see mother, and you'll tell me
where you've been sailing," and he put his hand into the seafarer's.

And now the seafarer began to lose his reckoning; the compass no longer
pointed north. He had been away for ten years, and coming back he had
found his own self, the self that had jumped into the water at this
place ten years ago. Why had not the little boy done as he had done,
and been pulled into the barge and gone away? If this had happened
Ulick would have believed he was dreaming or that he was mad. But the
little boy was leading him, yes, he remembered the way, there was the
cottage, and its paling, and its hollyhocks. And there was his mother
coming out of the house and very little changed.

"Ulick, where have you been? Oh, you naughty boy," and she caught the
little boy up and kissed him. And so engrossed was her attention in her
little son that she had not noticed the man he had brought home with
him.

"Now who is this?" she said.

"Oh, mother, he jumped from the boat to the bank, and he will tell you,
mother, that I was not near the bank."

"Yes, mother, he was ten yards from the bank; and now tell me, do you
think you ever saw me before?"... She looked at him.

"Oh, it's you! Why we thought you were drowned."

"I was picked up by a bargeman."

"Well, come into the house and tell us what you've been doing."

"I've been seafaring," he said, taking a chair. "But what about this
Ulick?"

"He's your brother, that's all."

His mother asked him of what he was thinking, and Ulick told her how
greatly astonished he had been to find a little boy exactly like
himself, waiting at the same place.

"And father?"

"Your father is away."

"So," he said, "this little boy is my brother. I should like to see
father. When is he coming back?"

"Oh," she said, "he won't be back for another three years. He enlisted
again."

"Mother," said Ulick, "you don't seem very glad to see me."

"I shall never forget the evening we spent when you threw yourself into
the canal. You were a wicked child."

"And why did you think I was drowned?"

"Well, your cap was picked up in the bulrushes."

He thought that whatever wickedness he had been guilty of might have
been forgiven, and he began to feel that if he had known how his mother
would receive him he would not have come home.

"Well, the dinner is nearly ready. You'll