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By Root 4510 0

leader of the pursuit, found that, suddenly and with no warning, something had happened to him which was to happen five years later in Paris to a British soldier even whose name he would never hear. He-the deputy-was a poet, not the writing kind, or anyway not Tuesday yet, but rather still one of Homer's mere mute orphan godchildren sired by blind chance into a wealthy and political New Orleans family and who, by that family's standards, had failed at Harvard and then wasted two years at Oxford before the family found out about it and fetched him home where, after some months under the threat of the full marshalate, he compromised with his father on the simple deputyship. And so that night-it was in Arkansas, in a new paint-rank hotel room in a little booming logging town, itself less old than last year-he realised what it was about the whole business that he had refused to accept ever since Weatherford, Texas, and then in the next second dismissed it forever because what remained had not only to be the answer but the truth too; or not even the truth, but truth, because truth was truth: it didn't have to be anything; it didn't even care whether it was so or not even, looking (the deputy) at it not even in triumph but in humility, because an old Negro minister had already seen it with one glance going on two years ago now-a minister, a man of God, sworn and dedicated enemy of man's lusts and follies, yet who from that first moment had not only abetted theft and gambling, but had given to the same cause the tender virgin years of his own child as ever of old had Samuel's father or Abraham his Isaac; and not even with pride because at last he had finally seen the truth even if it did take him a year, but at least pride in the fact that from the very first, as he knew now, he had performed his part in the pursuit with passion and regret. So ten minutes Mer he waked his second-in-command, and two days later in the New York office he said, 'Give it up. You'll never catch him,'

'Meaning you wont,' the owner of the horse said. 'If you like it that way,' the deputy said. 'I've resigned,'

'You should have done that eight months ago when you quit,' Touche then,' the deputy said. 'If that makes you feel better too. Maybe what I'm trying to do now is apologise because I didn't know it eight months ago too.' He said: 'I know about what you have spent so far. You know what the horse is now. I'll give you my check for that amount. I'll buy your ruined horse from you. Call it off.' The owner told him what he had actually paid for the horse. It was almost as much as the public believed. 'All right,' the dep-uty said. 'I cant give you a check for that much, but I'll sign a note for it. Even my father wont live forever,' The owner pressed a button. A secretary entered. The owner spoke briefly to the secretary, who went out and returned and laid a check on the desk before the owner, who signed the check and pushed it across to the deputy. It was for a sum still larger than the difference between the horse's cost and that of the pursuit to date. It was made out to the deputy.

'That's your fee for catching my horse and deporting that Englishman and bringing my nigger back in handcuffs,' the owner said. The deputy folded the check twice and tore it across twice, the owner's thumb already on the buzzer as the deputy dropped the fragments carefully into an ashtray and was already standing to leave when the secretary opened the door again. 'Another check,' the owner said without even turning his head. 'Add to it the reward for the capture of the men who stole my horse.'

But he didn't even wait for that one, and it was Oklahoma before he (ex now) overtook the pursuit, joining it now as the private young man with money-or who had had it once and lost or spent it-had used to join Marlborough's continental tours (and indeed meeting among them who a week ago had been his companions in endeavor the same cold-fronted unanimity of half-con-tempt which the private young men would meet among Marlborough's professionals). Then the little bleak railway stations