“Sina should call them back.”

“Maybe she will,” I said. But somehow I knew she wouldn’t. That this whole demoralizing incident had capped her glorious UFO experience in a way that couldn’t be uncapped. It was embarrassing enough to tell people who didn’t believe you what you’d seen. But to not tell someone who was prepared to believe you was far worse.

Then to my astonishment we saw Zebediah with the hermit. They were coming down the coastal path that Old Tom had made years ago. The hermit, as far as I knew, hadn’t talked to anyone since his accident except for Old Tom. And even then not so much because, Old Tom says, the hermit has only part of his wits and sometimes forgets even how to talk and has to use hand gestures. Old Tom figures the hermit had a terrible blow to the head and too much exposure to cold waters before managing to crawl up out of the ocean, and it left him permanently wanting.

“What were you doing with the hermit?” I asked as Zebediah came running up to us and the hermit turned back for home.

“I was spying on him,” said Zebediah. “Through the trees. His house is made of driftwood and is set back in the woods away from the path. You would never know it was there if you didn’t know how to find it. I found it exploring a deer trail. He’s got a pulley that goes down to the beach to bring up anything he finds beachcombing. He’s got his own vegetable garden. He saw me and asked me in.”

“He asked you in?” I said, further astonished. “He’s never said word one to me.”

“That’s so Zebediah,” said Winifred. “You just go and insinuate yourself everywhere, don’t you?”

“What’s his place like on the inside?” I asked. I had spied on it, too, from time to time but had never been inside.

“He’s got millions of books,” said Zebediah.

“That’s very odd,” I said. “Because he never goes to town, so how would he get them?”

“The hermit told me that Old Tom gives them to him.”

“I didn’t know,” I said, feeling a bit put out that the hermit was telling Zebediah things that he and Old Tom hadn’t told me. I mean, the hermit didn’t talk to people at all, but it seemed to me that if he did he should talk to me, not Zebediah, since, after all, he was on our property. I realized uncomfortably that this made it seem as if I thought we, in some sense, owned the hermit and it wasn’t that exactly, but really it was galling that the hermit preferred confiding in a twitchy six-year-old boy rather than a charming, clever twelve-year-old girl.

“How did he get here?” asked Winifred.

“Old Tom says he was wearing the remnants of what looked like a very tattered air force uniform when he found him one day peacefully building a shelter in the woods. When Old Tom told him he was only another three kilometers to our house the hermit said nothing. So then Old Tom asked the hermit if he had been in the air force and had an accident, but the hermit didn’t remember what branch of the military he’d been in or what exactly had happened. Old Tom figured he had somehow washed up on shore, so Old Tom walked the cliff trail back and forth for days to make sure no one else was lying hurt and needing rescue. He offered to help the hermit find family or call the air force for him, but the hermit begged Old Tom not to tell anyone about him. He was afraid they would take him away. He loved the cabin he was building. Old Tom said from the construction of it you could tell he was smart and had all kinds of skills. He also said it’s unlikely that anyone who stumbled on him would take note but it’s just as well his cabin was tucked back in the forest.