Mankind, as a whole, could not be completely wrong. Religious faith, of any sort, must be something more than a mere device of man's own making to fill the aching void that lay in mankind's heart. Even the old Neanderthalers had laid their dead so that when they rose to second life they would face the rising sun, and had sprinkled in the grave the handsful of red ocher symbolic of that second life, and had left with the dead those weapons and adornments they would need in the life to come.

And he had to know! He must force himself to know! And he would know, when he had schooled himself to reach deep into the hidden nature of existence. Somewhere in that mystic pool he would find the truth.

There must be more to life, he thought, than continued existence on this earth, no matter for how long. There must be another eternity somewhere beyond the reawakened and renewed and immortal flesh.

Today, this very day, he'd rededicate himself. He'd spend a longer time upon his knees and he'd seek the deeper and he'd shut out all else but the search he had embarked upon—and this might be the day. Somewhere in the future lay the hour and minute of his understanding and his faith, and there was no telling when that hour might strike. It might, indeed, be close.

For this he'd need all his strength and he'd have his breakfast first, even before the morning prayer, and thus reinforced, he'd enter once again with a renewed vigor upon his seeking after truth.

He went along the sandspit to the willows where he had tied his lines and he pulled them in. They came in easily and there was nothing on them.

The hard ball of hunger squeezed the tighter as he stared at the empty hooks.

So it would be river clams again. He gagged at the thought of them.