"I'll tell you about the barge if you'll tell me about your mother. Does she tell you not to come down to the canal?" The boy turned away his head and nodded it. "Does she beat you if she catches you here?" "Oh, no, mother never beats me." "Is she kind to you?" "Yes, she's very kind, she lives up there, and there's a garden to our cottage, and the name 'Hill Cottage' is painted up on the gate post." "Now," said Ulick, "tell me your name." "My name is Ulick." "Ulick! And what's your other name?" "Ulick Burke." "Ulick Burke!" said the big Ulick. "Well, my name is the same. And I used to live at Hill Cottage too." The boy did not answer. "Whom do you live with?" "I live with mother." "And what's her name?" "Well, Burke is her name," said the boy. "But her front name?" "Catherine." "And where's your father?" "Oh, father's a soldier; he's away." "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." "I was picked up by a bargeman." "Well, come into the house and tell us what you've been doing." "I've been seafaring," he said, taking a chair. "But what about this Ulick?" "He's your brother, that's all." His mother asked him of what he was thinking, and Ulick told her how greatly astonished he had been to find a little boy exactly like himself, waiting at the same place. "And father?" "Your father is away." "So," he said, "this little boy is my brother. I should like to see father. When is he coming back?" "Oh," she said, "he won't be back for another three years. He enlisted again."