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O'Fallon had the black stick in his hands, and he thought how easy it would be to kill him. Pull his throat out with his teeth and watch the warm blood gush, slower and slower until it stopped.
    "Hungry, boyo? Too damn bad. You just sit in here, practicin' how to be a gentleman. Take a few more bows." The door closed, blocking out the hate in his face.
    Why were they enemies? Weren't they both men? The fury in O'Fallon's eyes made him feel wild, mad, but not like an animal. Like a man.

Chapter 3
     
    Sam and Sydney began to wait every day for the lost man. O'Fallon took him for a walk in the afternoons at one o'clock, while Papa and Charles ate lunch in the office and went over their notes, discussing the morning's progress. At first O'Fallon wouldn't stop, even when Sam begged him to, and a wet and sandy Hector tried his best not to let either man pass. But the guard, apparently out of nothing but meanness, wouldn't let his charge linger even for a moment. "Got no time," he'd say, one of his pawlike hands shoving at the lost man's shoulder as they hurried by. "Professor wants 'im back by two." Once he shouted out, "Have a care, lad!" when Sam came too close to suit him. "No sudden moves—no tellin' what he might do."
    "He wouldn't do anything," Sam retorted furiously, and Sydney was torn between scolding him for rudeness and echoing him. She thought of talking to O'Fallon herself, trying to reason with him. She disliked him too much, though, even to speak to him—probably out of proportion to his offenses, but she couldn't help it. Instead she went to her father.
    "Is that man dangerous or isn't he?" she inquired, catching his attention, so hard to get, by taking him by surprise. His study was his sanctum, and anyone who entered it during his workday had better have a good reason. Charles was with him; both men looked up from their desks and stared at her.
    "The lost man, the Ontario Man—is he a threat to Sam and me, Papa?"
    "Don't think so." He took off his pince-nez in surprise. "Wouldn't have him here if he were. Gentle as a lamb."
    "Well, as to that," Charles began, then halted. He never liked to contradict his employer.
    "Then why can't he stop with us when Mr. O'Fallon takes him for his walk on the shore?"
    "He can."
    "He can?"
    "Certainly. Do him good, needs the company. Been thinking of suggesting it. More contact. Might help. Supervised, of course."
    Thrown off her stride, she was momentarily speechless. "Tell him, then, will you?"
    "Who?"
    "Mr. O'Fallon. Tell him to stop acting like a prison warden." She waited, but her father already had his nose in his book. "Why does he carry a club?"
    "Hm? What's that?"
    "A club. He carries a billy club, Papa. Why?"
    "Hm! Can't imagine."
    "Well, will you please tell him not to? It scares Sam," she fabricated. He nodded vaguely. "Charles, you tell him not to," she tried, despairing of her father remembering to do any such thing. Charles was smiling at her, taking the opportunity to flirt. "Please, Charles, would you say something to him?"
    "Of course I will," he said solicitously. "I'll do it today."
    She beamed at him. "Thank you."
    * * * * *
    The next day, O'Fallon, clubless and scowling, sat on a rock thirty yards from where Sam and his new friend knelt in the surf, their pants legs rolled up to the knees, building sand castles.
    Or rather, Sam built them and the lost man watched, grave and silent, shy and a little awkward, but profoundly curious. Within minutes, Sydney's nervousness changed to fascination. She sat a ways behind Sam on a blanket in the sand and stared at the man's face, the expressions ghosting across it, transfixed by his emotional transparency one minute, his intriguing opaqueness the next. Time after time she thought he would speak. His mouth, she could swear, formed a k whenever Sam said the word "castle," and he appeared to be spellbound by the crenelated shapes of walls and gates and towers her brother made with his inverted bucket. Sam kept up a