He wanted to wake her andtake her again but as he thought about this a sad feeling rose up and forbadeit. The more he hesitated the more the sadness grew. He would like to know herbetter. He’d had a feeling all night that he had seen her before somewhere, along time ago.

That thought seemed tobring it all down. Now the sadness came on in full and blended with thedarkness of the cabin and with the dim indigo light through the hatch above. Upthere were stars, framed by the hatch opening so that they seemed to move whenthe boat rocked. Part of Orion momentarily disappeared, then appeared again.Soon all the winter constellations would be back.

Cars rolling over abridge in the distance sounded clearly through the cold night air. They were ontheir way to Kingston, somewhere on the bluffs above, over the Hudson River.The boat was berthed here in this tiny creek for a night’s rest on the waysouth.

There was not much time.There was almost no green left in the trees along the river. Many of the turnedleaves had already fallen. During these last few days, gusts of cold wind hadswept down the river valley from the north, swirling the leaves up off theirbranches into the air in sudden spiraling flights of red and maroon and goldand brown across the water of the river into the path of the boat as it moveddown the buoyed channel. There had been hardly any other boats in the channel.A few boats at docks along the river bank seemed abandoned and forlorn now thatsummer had ended and their owners had turned to other pursuits. Overhead the Vsof ducks and geese had been everywhere, flying down on the north wind from theCanadian Arctic. Many of them must have been just ducklings and goslings whenhe first began this voyage from the inland ocean of Lake Superior, a thousandmiles behind him now and what seemed like a thousand years ago.