“Found it in the road up by the Websters’ early this morning. Thought Miss Tuttle might like to see him.”

Jane was already on her feet.

“Put it on the table, Nick. Oh, isn’t that beautiful!” She lifted one wing to show the great span and the overlaid pattern of feathers, soft brown and white. “Hit by a car, do you suppose—flying low?”

“There isn’t a mark on him anywhere.”

“And the strength in those legs and claws,” John said. They drooped now, long and bright yellow.

Jane was handling the bird intently, all her powers suddenly awake and alive. “It must be a Great Gray Owl, Nick. Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s it, but we’ll have a look,” and she went to a small bookcase and drew out a field guide. Together the two men and the tiny old lady pored over the page of owls. “Not a Barred Owl—see, he doesn’t have the barred breast. Yes, here it is—a Great Gray. Well, Nick, that was quite a find.”

For a moment they all three stood looking down.

“Athene’s bird,” Jane murmured. “You can see why the owl has haunted men. Oh, if we could only see his eyes, so round and gold!” She laid a hand gently on the incredible softness of the head, as if to bless it. “Thank you, Nick—thank you for sharing this marvel with us.”

“I’ll bury him now,” Nick said, lifting the bird in his two hands and holding it close to his chest.

Jane and John went to the door with him, and just as he was about to go, she asked, “All quiet on the hunting front, I hope?”

“I guess so,” and he walked off toward his car, a tall figure wrapped in loneliness.

“Sharing his inner person with no one,” Jane said. “I am touched that he came.”

Then they turned back into the intimacy of the little low room.

“It was rather wonderful, wasn’t it?” John said, standing by the table, for it was clearly time to go now. “You know, Jane, I was thinking as we stood here together, sharing the beauty and the sadness of the thing, that somehow this is what Willard is all about—this is what makes it precious, even to my independent children. They come back here and it’s always a place where Nick, sensitive, uneducated, and wild, and you, with all that you are, and I, so worldly and confused—such a dud, really—can all communicate about the things that really matter. That’s the magic. It’s where all kinds of lives can meet. I wish the history could somehow say it.”

“Well, it won’t.” Jane smiled and sat down. “But we, at least, can try to do something distinguished. I would like that, John. For me a sort of final message. You’ll help me, won’t you?”