that his father kept a lot of racehorses that were spiffing jumpers and that his father would give a good tip to Brother Michael any time he wanted it because Brother Michael was very decent and always told him the news out of the paper they got every day up in the castle. There was every kind of news in the paper: accidents, shipwrecks, sports and politics.

-Now it is all about politics in the paper, he said. Do your people talk about that too?

-Yes, Stephen said.

-Mine too, he said.

Then he thought for a moment and said:

-You have a queer name, Dedalus, and I have a queer name too, Athy. My name is the name of a town. Your name is like Latin.

Then he asked:

-Are you good at riddles?

-Not very good.

Then he said:

- Can you answer me this one? Why is the county Kildare like the leg of a fellow’s breeches?

Stephen thought what could be the answer and then said:

-I give it up.

-Because there is a thigh in it, he said. Do you see the joke? Athy is the town in the county Kildare and a thigh is the other thigh.

-O, I see, Stephen said.

-That’s an old riddle, he said.

After a moment he said:

-I say!

-What? asked Stephen.

-You know, he said, you can ask that riddle another way?

-Can you? said Stephen.

-The same riddle, he said. Do you know the other way to ask it?

-No, said Stephen.

-Can you not think of the other way? he said.

He looked at Stephen over the bedclothes as he spoke. Then he lay back on the pillow and said:

-There is another way but I won’t tell you what it is.

Why did he not tell it? His father, who kept the racehorses, must be a magistrate too like Saurin’s father and Nasty Roche’s father. He thought of his own father, of how he sang songs while his mother played and of how he always gave him a shilling when he asked for sixpence and he felt sorry for him that he was not a magistrate like the other boys’ fathers. Then why was he sent to that place with them? But his father had told him that he would be no