This man was a man who always loved the water. It made a great calm in his mind to see the sea spread calm before his feet; the storm of the sea filled him with life, and to die in the sea would, he thought, be like a child sinking to sleep in its mother’s arms. Clear, translucent water drew him with a great longing, and he dreamt often that he should bathe, but as his feet touched the water it ebbed away.
Now near his home there spread, embowered in trees, a great lake; on one side ran a road neglected and seldom used, from this the lake ran up curving out of sight. Half-way up towards the curve there stood a great oak, and beneath this he often bathed. So being in this perplexity he went out one summer morning, passed through the sleeping village and by the church, and went down to the lake.
And in the turn of the year again the woods were lightly foliaged, and the branches shone golden between the leaves; the ground beneath the oak was carpeted with hyacinths and primroses, here and there a late anemone starred it.
Here he undressed and plunged from a little height into a pool. His hands parted the water, which rushed up him as he plunged; then he gave himself up to the element and it lifted him to the surface. Again he warred with it, yet moved by means of it, with steady stroke parting it, and again he turned over and yielded himself up to it, and the least movement was enough to keep him floating on the surface, and he rejoiced in the coolness and the purity. So when he had finished he returned and clothed himself, and moved on through the edge of the wood, looking at the water, wondering at a transparency that was so deep and the strength of the fleeting thing, till he came to where a little wooden bridge spanned the overflow from the lake; and upon the bridge a boy of about eight years old was sitting.
He was not dressed like a village child; his cap lay beside him with a little spray of reddening oak stuck into it, and he was staring at the water.
“Who are you, my son?” said the man as he passed.
“I’m a king,” the child replied; “but I’m an outlaw just now, you see,” he went on, laying his hand on his cap. “I can’t get into my kingdom.”
“Where is your kingdom?” asked the man.
“Come down here and you’ll see,” he said.
The man sat down beside him on the plank.