There was something wrong, I knew. I could feel the edge of wrongness. Something about these two, as if I should have known them, as if I'd met them somewhere many years ago and suddenly would know them and remember who they were and where I'd met them and what kind of folks they were. But reach for the memory of them as best I could, it all eluded me.

The man was talking again and I realized I was only hearing part of what he said. I knew he was talking about coon hunting and the best bait to use for catfish and a lot of other very friendly things, but I had missed, I knew, a great amount of detail.

I finished off the glass and held it out again without any invitation from him and he filled it up again and it all was comfortable and fine—the wood fire murmuring hi the stove and the clock upon the mantle shelf beside the pan- try door ticking loudly and companionably in the close confines of the room. In the morning life would take up again and I'd drive to Pilot Knob, taking the fork I'd missed. But this, I told myself, was a piece of sitting time, a piece of resting time, a time to sit and let the clock tick on and not think of anything, or not much of anything. I was building up quite a glow from the moonshine I was drinking and I knew I was, but I didn't seem to mind. I went right on drinking and listening and not thinking of tomorrow.

"By the way," I asked, "how are the dinosaurs this year?"

"Why, there are a few of them about," he said, unconcernedly, "but it seems to me they're a mite smaller than they used to be."

And then he went on telling about a bee tree he had cut and about the year when the rabbits, eating loco weed, got so pugnacious packs of them were hazing grizzly bear all about the landscape. But that must have happened somewhere else, for here in this country, I knew, there were ho loco weeds and no grizzlies, either.