, and they stole me away, and brought me here, and sold me to
the master of yonder house."'

'Then the sailor said to her, "Your father and mother are still alive, I
know, and they have lost none of their wealth. Wilt thou not come with
us and see them again?"'

'Then the woman made the sailors swear that they would bring her safely
to the city of Sidon. She told them that when their ship was ready she
would come down to it, and that she would bring what gold she could lay
her hands on away from her master's house, and that she would also
bring the child whom she nursed. "He is a wise child," she said, "and
you can sell him for a slave when you come to a foreign land."'

'When the Phoenician ship was ready to depart they sent a message to the
woman. The sailor who brought the message brought too a chain of gold
with amber beads strung here and there, for my mother to buy. And, while
my mother and her handmaids were handling the chain, the sailor nodded
to the woman, and she went out, taking with her three cups of gold, and
leading me by the hand,'

'The sun sank and all the ways were darkened. But the Phoenician woman
went down to the harbour and came to the ship and went aboard it. And
when the sailor who had gone to my father's house came back, they raised
the mast and sails, and took the oars in their hands, and drew the ship
away from our land. We sailed away and I was left stricken at heart. For
six days we sailed over the sea, and on the seventh day the woman died
and her body was cast into the deep. The wind and the waves bore us to
Ithaka, and there the merchants sold me to Laertes, the father of
Odysseus.'

'The wife of Laertes reared me kindly, and I grew up with the youngest
of her daughters, the lovely Ctimene. But Ctimene went to Same, and was
married to one of the princes of that island. Afterwards Laertes' lady
sent me to work in the fields. But always she treated me kindly. Now
Laertes' lady is dead, she wasted away from grief when she heard no
tidings of her only son, Odysseus. Laertes yet lives, but since the
death of his noble wife he never leaves his house. All day he sits by
his fire, they say, and thinks upon his son's doom, and how his son's
substance is being wasted, and how his son's son will have but little to
inherit.'

So Odysseus passed part of the night, Eumaeus telling him of his
wanderings and his sorrows. And while they were speaking, Telemachus,
the son of Odysseus, came to Ithak