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. Laertes was amazed at seeing a warrior all in mail come into his garden, but said that he was the father of Ulysses, who had long been unheard of and unseen. 'And who are you?' he asked. 'Where is your own country?' Ulysses said that he came from Sicily, and that he had met Ulysses five years ago, and hoped that by this time he had come home. Then the old man sat down and wept, and cast dust on his head, for Ulysses had not arrived from Sicily in five long years; certainly he must be dead. Ulysses could not bear to see his father weep, and told him that he was himself, come home at last, and that he had killed all the wooers. But Laertes asked him to prove that he really was Ulysses, so he showed the scar on his leg, and, looking round the garden, he said: 'Come, I will show you the very trees that you gave me when I was a little boy running about after you, and asking you for one thing or another, as children do. These thirteen pear trees are my very own; you gave them to me, and mine are these fifty rows of vines, and these forty fig trees.' Then Laertes was fainting for joy, but Ulysses caught him in his arms and comforted him. But, when he came to himself, he sighed, and said: 'How shall we meet the feud of all the kin of the slain men in Ithaca and the other islands?' 'Be of good courage, father,' said Ulysses. 'And now let us go to the farmhouse and breakfast with Telemachus.' So Laertes first went to the baths, and then put on fresh raiment, and Ulysses wondered to see him look so straight and strong. 'Would I were as strong as when I took the castle of Nericus, long ago,' said the old man, 'and would that I had been in the fight against the wooers!' Then all the old man's servants came in, overjoyed at the return of Ulysses, and they breakfasted merrily together.