Lord That She Might Be Safe. She

That's For Calling Your Father A Fool. It May Be True, But It's Disrespectful. Brian Fraser To Teenage Jamie

He Shook His Head, Absorbed In One Of His Feats Of Memory, Those Brief Periods Of Scholastic Rapture Where He Lost Touch With The World Around Him, Absorbed Completely In Conjuring Up Knowledge From All Its Sources.

The Rest Of The Journey Passed Uneventfully, If You Consider It Uneventful To Ride Fifteen Miles On Horseback Through Rough Country At Night, Frequently Without Benefit Of Roads, In Company With Kilted Men Armed To The Teeth, And Sharing A Horse With A Wounded Man. At Least We Were Not Set Upon By Highwaymen, We Encountered No Wild Beasts, And It Didn't Rain. By The Standards I Was Becoming Used To, It Was Quite Dull.

Torn Between The Impulse To Stroke His Head, And The Urge To Cave It In With A Rock, I Did Neither.

Overall, The Library Held A Hushed Exultation, As Though The Cherished Volumes Were All Singing Soundlessly Within Their Covers.