"But my father was a soldier too, and I used to live in that cottage."
"And where have you been ever since?"
"Oh," he said, "I've 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."