g in the vineyard, digging round a plant.
When he came to him he saw that this old man was not a slave nor a
servant, but Laertes, his own father.

When he saw him, wasted with age and all uncared for, Odysseus stood
still, leaning his hand against a pear tree and sorrowing in his heart.
Old Laertes kept his head down as he stood digging at the plant, and he
did not see Odysseus until he stood before him and said:

'Old man, thou dost care for this garden well and all things here are
flourishing--fig tree, and vine, and olive, and pear. But, if a stranger
may say it, thine own self is not cared for well.'

'Who art thou that dost speak to me like this?' old Laertes said,
lifting his head.

'I am a stranger in Ithaka,' said Odysseus. 'I seek a man whom I once
kindly treated--a man whose name was Odysseus. A stranger, he came to
me, and he declared that he was of Ithaka, and that one day he would
give me entertainment for the entertainment I had given him. I know not
if this man be still alive.'

Old Laertes wept before Odysseus. 'Ah,' said he, 'if thou hadst been
able to find him here, the gifts you gave him would not have been
bestowed in vain. True hospitality thou wouldst have received from
Odysseus, my son. But he has perished--far from his country's soil he
has perished, the hapless man, and his mother wept not over him, nor his
wife, nor me, his father.'

[Illustration]

So he spake and then with his hands he took up the dust of the ground,
and he strewed it over his head in his sorrow. The heart of Odysseus was
moved with grief. He sprang forward and fell on his father's neck and he
kissed him, saying:

'Behold I am here, even I, my father. I, Odysseus, have come back to
mine own country. Cease thy lamentation until I tell thee of the things
that have happened. I have slain the wooers in mine hall, and I have
avenged all their injuries and all their wrongful doings. Dost thou not
believe this, my father? Then look on what I will show thee. Behold on
my foot the mark of the boar's tusk--there it is from the days of my
youth.'

Laertes looked down on the bare foot, and he saw the scar, but still his
mind was clouded by doubt. But then Odysseus took him through the
garden, and he told him of the fruit trees that Laertes had set for him
when he, Odysseus, was a little child, following his father about the
garden--thirteen pear trees, and ten apple trees, and forty fig trees.

When Odysseus showed him thes