“With the final composition; what you’ve done is excellent. The color thirty-five-millimeter slides we sent on—they were delighted, those who looked at them; you know, the Church Eltern.”

Reflecting, Tibor said, “Strange. You can still get color film and get it processed. But you can’t get a daily newspaper.”

“Well, there’s the six-o’clock news on the radio,” Father Handy pointed out. “From Salt Lake City.” He waited hopefully. There was no answer; the limbless man drank the coffee silently. “Do you know,” Father Handy said, “what the oldest word in the English language is?”

“No,” Tibor said.

‘“Might,”‘ Father Handy said. “In the sense of being mighty. It’s Macht in the German. But it goes further back than Teutonic; it goes all the way back to the Hittites.”

“Hmmm.”

“The Hittite word mekkis. ‘Power.’ “ Again he waited hopefully. “ ‘Did you not chatter? Is this not woman’s way?’ “ He was quoting from Mozart’s Magic Flute. “ ‘Man’s way,’ “ he finished, “ ‘is action.’ “

Tibor said, “You’re the one who’s chattering.”

“But you,” Father Handy said, “must act. I had something to tell you.” He reflected. “Oh yes. The sheep.” He had, behind the church in a five-acre pasture, six ewes. “I got a ram late yesterday,” he said, “from Theodore Benton. On loan, for breeding. Benton dumped him off while I was gone. He’s an old ram; he has gray on his muzzle.”

“Hmmm.”

“A dog came and tried to run the flock, that red Irish-setter thing of the Yeats’. You know; it runs my ewes almost daily.”

Interested now, the limbless man turned his head. “Did the ram—”

.”Five times the dog approached the flock. Five times, moving very slowly, the ram walked toward the dog, leaving the flock behind. The dog, of course, stopped and stood still when he saw the ram coming toward him, and so the ram halted and pretended; he cropped.” Father Handy smiled as he remembered. “How smart the old fellow was; I saw him crop, but he was watching the dog. The dog growled and barked, and the old fellow cropped on. And then again the dog moved in. But this time the dog ran, he bounded by the ram; he got between the ram and the flock.”