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and the look of the buildings to say "Mine" more than "Keep Away." The Diamond County Home For the Aged lorded over a considerable agricultural plain in New Jersey. The main building, the home, was inexactly an embroidered cube, with a shallow, somewhat hovering roof, topped by the airy cupola. The west wing, once a ballroom, looked added-on but in fact was a portion of the architect's and the second Mrs. Andrews' conceptions. The substance of the great high house was wood painted a tempered yellow weathering toward orange. To the credit of the old carpenters their work still appeared solid, without being thickly made. Along the eaves fancy trim hung, lace wheedled from pine planking. Five lightning rods were braced by spirals of hand-forged iron. The sixth had partially collapsed and pointed diagonally. Maple, horsechestnut, cherry, walnut, apple, and oak trees had grown old on the grounds. There were several broad elm stumps as memorial to the blight.
    Hook prayed, requesting that the spell be allowed to pass and that his children be restored to Mm in Heaven. The face of his daughter occurred to him, when she was twenty-two and not married a year. He asked that he be guided to act rightly on this day. Warm color touched his lids. His mind seemed a point within an infinitely thick blanket.
    Steadied, he dared open his eyes. The grass had peculiarly darkened, growing waxier, in anticipation of the rain. The cigar had died beneath the conical ash. A sense of being menaced made him look up. Gregg approached rapidly, limping as he sometimes did though his legs were sound, out of sarcastic anger or excess of energy.
    "Where the hell did Lucas get to?" he asked. "Conner must have made the bastard Garbage Supervisor and we'll be lucky if he ever tips his f.ing hat to us."
    Hook was pleased to have an answer. "Well: ask Conner. There he stands."
    Gregg, nearsighted in the way of small people, had difficulty making out the plump figure of their prefect, where he stood at a distance, by the porch steps.
     
    THE REVERBERATION of descending all those stairs still sounded in Conner's legs, making them feel disproportionately big. From the window, he had watched Hook perform his rounds among the old people, tried to return to work, been wounded again by the complaining contents of the letter, and had let the humid importunate atmosphere Buddy was giving off get on his nerves. The air on his desk cooled; the slats of sunshine dimmed and disappeared. Returning to the window, he observed, through the blinds, a few flimsy clouds, perfectly white, strung like wash on the vapor trail of an airplane too high to see or hear. So near the ionosphere, so far from his fellow-modern watching below, was the aviator that relative to that breadth of blue his progress was imperceptible; yet the length of his trail, intact through half the firmament, bore witness to the titanic speed he was making, alone, in that airless cold.
    A few clouds dropping their shadows shouldn't matter. Certainly the immense bowl above could not be filled. But Conner pictured the fair occurring in unblemished weather, like the weather on a woodcut. The weather of this one day would be, he felt, a judgment on his work; these people, having yielded all authority, looked beyond themselves for everything--sufficient food, adequate shelter, and fair weather on their one day of profit and celebration. He would be blamed, and strangely felt prepared to accept the blame, for foul skies,
    He should be with them, his people. By default Hook was capturing the domain. Conner's jealousy deepened. And the aura of holiday, the general dislocation of duties, infected him, and he began the flights of stairs, but not so suddenly Buddy did not communicate, through the simple pink oval of his face caught in the corner of Conner's eye as he seized the doorknob, amazement.
    Once out in the open he wondered how he could help, then realized it was not in his position to help. The emotion that had led