An old woman, the cook, greeted us familiarly and told Iris that _he_ could be found in the study. In a small warm room, sitting beside a stone fireplace empty of fire, Cave sat, a scrapbook on his knees, his expression vague, unfocused. Our arrival recalled him from some dense reverie. He got to his feet quickly and shook hands; “I’m glad you came,” he said. “I wanted to see you,” I said awkwardly: it was Cave’s particular gift to strike a note of penetrating sincerity at all times, even in his greetings which became, as a result, disconcertingly like benedictions. Iris excused herself and I sat beside him in front of the fireplace. “Have you seen these?” he asked, pushing the scrapbook toward me. I took it and nodded when I saw, neatly pasted and labeled, the various newspaper stories concerning the accident. It had got a surprisingly large amount of space as though, instinctively, the editors had anticipated a coming celebrity for “Hit-and-Run Prophet.” “Look what they say about me.” “I’ve read them all,” I said, handing the scrapbook back to him, a little surprised that, considering his unworldliness, he had bothered to keep such careful track of his appearance in the press. It showed a new, rather touching side to him: he was like an actor hoarding his notices, good and bad. “I don’t think it’s serious: after all you were let off by the court, and the man didn’t die.” “It was an accident of course yet that old man nearly received the greatest gift a man can have, a quick death. I wanted to tell the court that. I could’ve convinced them, I’m sure, but Paul said no. It was the first time I’ve ever gone against my own instinct and I don’t like it.” Emphatically, he shut the book. We watched the cook who came into the room and lit the fire. When the first crackling filled the room and the pine had caught, she left, observing that we were to eat in an hour. “You want to wash up?” asked Cave mechanically, his eyes on the fire, his hands clasped in his lap like those dingy marble replicas of hands which decorate medieval tombs: that night there was an unhuman look to Cave: pale, withdrawn, inert ... his lips barely moving when he spoke, as though another’s voice spoke through senseless flesh. “No thanks,” I said, a little chilled by his tone, by his remoteness. I got him off the subject of the accident as quickly as possible and we talked until dinner of the introduction I was to write. It was most enlightening. As I suspected, Cave had read only the Bible and that superficially, just enough to be able, at crucial moments, to affect the seventeenth-century prose of the translators and to confound thereby simple listeners with the familiar authority of his manner. His knowledge of philosophy did not even encompass the names of the principals. Plato and Aristotle rang faint, unrelated bells and with them the meager carillon ended.