"Well, you find it for Peter. Start him up for the frigate, and then you get back home." "Yes, I will. It is not far to the north stockade." They were both staring at him, confused, numbed with awe. "I--we must thank you," Peter muttered. "We saw the Indians as they fled." "Oh, that's all right. Glad to do it. But I've got to get--away now. I've got to get back where--where I came from--" Then Greta took a step toward him. "Oh, please, who--what are you? This thing you have done for us--" Alan was gently smiling. "Hard to explain. You'd better just call it a miracle," he said. His finger pressed the time-lever. He could see Peter grip the girl as they shrank away with terror, staring at him while slowly he faded into nothingness.... * * * * * May, 1942. In a dim, quiet room of the New York Historical Society Alan sat poring over an old Dutch chronicle of Nieuw Amsterdam. And then he found what he was after--an account of Stuyvesant's surrender to the Duke of York. It was a modern English translation of an account by someone who had lived in the little Dutch city. Alan read it, awed. Here was mention of young Peter Van Saant, who had gone up the river to the _Queen Catherine_--the English frigate which had slipped past the forts in the fog that night. And it told of Greta Dykeman who had shown him the way to where her rowboat was hidden. And then--the miracle! Greta Dykeman and Peter Van Saant--so the chronicle stated--had been attacked by Indians that night. They had taken refuge in a cave, where a great shining presence in the guise of a strange man had come and frightened away the Indians. He had led Peter and Greta to safety--and then had vanished. Silently Alan left the Historical Society. Why had it seemingly been his destiny to rescue that Dutch boy and girl? That strange urge which both he and his grandfather before him had felt so strongly--why was that? Van Saant--why, that suggested the name Vincent! The one, Dutch--and the other just its English, modernized equivalent? Alan hurried to the Genealogical Room at the Public Library; and there he found it. Ruth's family--the Vincents--and before that, the Van Saants. Then he came to 1656. The marriage of Peter Van Saant, to Mistress Greta Dykeman.... Alan sat numbly, staring in awe. If they had died in that smoke-filled cave, this son of theirs, recorded here as Hans Van Saant, born 1657, would never have been born, nor any of his descendants. No Ruth Vincent, now in 1942; no little son of hers and Alan's.... Alan was smiling to himself, a whimsical, awed smile. He certainly had had no cause to be apprehensive that his mission back into time would fail. It was ordained--predestined--a million events down from Peter and Greta to Ruth were recorded, with his own action fitting into them. Nothing else was possible! Miracle ... there is so much that none of us will ever understand!