Then, after a grateful farewell to Queen Arete, the hero is conducted to the waiting ship, and there left reclining upon the soft rugs that have been spread for him, and soon a sound sleep, very sweet, falls upon his eyelids. When Odysseus awakes, he is in his dear native land, though he does not recognize it until the goddess Athena appears and tells him how he is to regain wife and kingdom. For us, the rest of the story centres about Queen Penelope, who for so many, m'any years has been awaiting the return of her lord. Odysseus, disguised by the goddess in the form of an aged beggar, goes to the hut of the swineherd Eumaeus, with whose aid the plot for the destruction of the wooers is to be carried out; and Athena summons Telemachus to return from Lacedaemon to meet his father and bear his part in the final scenes. When the young man returns to the palace, after his interview with his father, "the nurse Euryclea saw him far before the rest, as she was strewing skin coverlets upon the carven chairs; and straightway she drew near him, weeping, and all the other maidens of Odysseus, of the hardy heart, gathered about him, and kissed him lovingly on the head and shoulders. Now wise Penelope came forth from her chamber, like Artemis or golden Aphrodite, and cast her arms about her dear son, and fell a-weeping, and kissed his face and both his beautiful eyes, and wept aloud, and spake to him winged words: "'Thou art come, Telemachus, sweet light of mine eyes; methought I should see thee never again, after thou hadst gone in thy ship to Pylus, secretly, and without my will, to seek tidings of thy dear father. Come now, tell me, what sign didst thou get of him?'" Telemachus tells his mother of his journey, and his friend Theoclymenus, who has the gift of second-sight, prophesies the speedy return of Odysseus. Soon the hero himself appears as a beggar in his own halls, and is roughly treated by the haughty wooers. He soundly whips the braggart beggar Irus, and the story of his presence is noised throughout the house. Constant Penelope is ever anxious to hear some word of her lord, and every wandering stranger with a tale to tell could win rich gifts from her by devising some story of Odysseus. She has heard of the beggar in her halls, and summons him to her presence and questions him, and tells him of her grief and her longing for more news of the absent one. When crafty Odysseus fashioned a story of his entertaining her lord in Crete, her tears flowed as she listened, and she wept for her own lord who was sitting by her. The disguised hero had compassion for his wife; but he craftily hid his tears, and described the appearance of Odysseus so fully that she could not deny the certain likeness.