er husband, come home
through many dangers after so many years. 'Nurse,' he cried to
Eurycleia, 'strew me a bed to lie alone, for her heart is hard as iron.'

Now Penelope put him to a trial. 'Eurycleia,' she said, 'strew a bed for
him outside the bridal chamber that he built for himself, and bring the
good bedstead out of that room for him.'

'How can any man bring out that bedstead?' said Ulysses, 'did I not make
it with my own hands, with a standing tree for the bedpost? No man could
move that bed unless he first cut down the tree trunk.'

Then at last Penelope ran to Ulysses and threw her arms round his neck,
kissing him, and said: 'Do not be angry, for always I have feared that
some strange man of cunning would come and deceive me, pretending to be
my lord. But now you have told me the secret of the bed, which no mortal
has ever seen or knows but you and I, and my maiden whom I brought from
my own home, and who kept the doors of our chamber.' Then they embraced,
and it seemed as if her white arms would never quite leave their hold on
his neck.

Ulysses told her many things, all the story of his wanderings, and how
he must wander again, on land, not on the sea, till he came to the
country of men who had never seen salt. 'The Gods will defend you and
bring you home to your rest in the end,' said Penelope, and then they
went to their own chamber, and Eurynome went before them with lighted
torches in her hands, for the Gods had brought them to the haven where
they would be.

X

THE END

With the coming of the golden dawn Ulysses awoke, for he had still much
to do. He and Telemachus and the cowherd and Eumaeus put on full armour,
and took swords and spears, and walked to the farm where old Laertes,
the father of Ulysses, lived among his servants and worked in his
garden. Ulysses sent the others into the farmhouse to bid the old
housekeeper get breakfast ready, and he went alone to the vines, being
sure that his father was at work among them.

There the old man was, in his rough gardening clothes, with leather
gloves on, and patched leather leggings, digging hard. His servants had
gone to gather loose stones to make a rough stone dyke, and he was all
alone. He never looked up till Ulysses went to him, and asked him whose
slave he was, and who owned the garden. He said that he was a stranger
in Ithaca, but that he had once met the king of the island, who declared
that one Laertes was his father.

Laert