Two minutes late Jacob weese ROLLING clouds meshed and interlocked, weaving pat-terns over the far mountains, giving the moon full opportunity to drench the landscape with warm, living light. The night was warm and exuded the countless fragrances of nature, mellow and soft, replacing the acrid odors of daytime. The setting was crowded with every aspect of natural beauty. Nature was in a giving mood. She bared her bosom, allowing full display to each individual component of her loveliness. Of the long gamut of her intoxicating moods this was her fullest. It weakened and made dizzy the beholder. No one part dominated with its own character, but all fused to form a display that rendered man-made creations colorless and ineffectual. The man strolling up the path, flecked and patterned with light, did not deprive himself of the slightest enjoyment. He drank in nameless odors and feasted his eyes in unconscious appreciation, letting it all become a formless background for his thoughts. In gamboling playfullness God occasionally stirs and troubles the complacent world by setting in its midst a man who does not fit in the accepted form. A daringness of vision and originality of thought marks him as different. Such was he who now used the path. He had become hesitant in all his actions. Early mistakes had made him wary in everything. He had become defensively vigilant, quick to retreat from an apparent blunder. An acute-ness of perception had not enabled him to educate himself into the herd mold. His life resembled that of an alley cat. A cat unwanted, living on what it could snatch from life. He too slunk through man's corridors when man was not about. But the cat's wants are physical; his were spiritual. His thoughts reverted to his tortured past, a past made up of ceaseless quest for a peace he could never find. He was the kid who always visited the swimming hole when none was there. Frequent attempts at communal play always ended in his ostracism. Books became his constant companion. He (Continued from Page 18) could always imagine himself as any one of the characters. It helped to ease the pain. He became an exponent of extremes. A long period of solitude always ended in a frenzied grasp after companionship and friends. Drink, long reputed as a leveler of people, was resorted to. But the sickening reality of the morning after had always overbalanced the night's pleasures, and the revolt of his stomach had ended his excursion into dissipation. His days became a quest after the peace he did not have in his soul. Sad remembrance of his happiness when he had arrived at college came to him. The ivy-cloistered buildings and indiscriminate bunches of trees and shrubbery seemed to offer a haven where he could develop a comforting philosophy. The college lay outside of the town and was reached by a single dirt road. Struck with its seclusion and age he likened it to one of the old monasteries where weary, world-sick men had interned themselves to live and die in quiet contentment. But the buildings housed gleaming tile and the latest style of decorating. Also, his peace was shattered by the professors who seemed either to be doddering with age or still in their adolescence. They either quoted ceaseless shreds of antiquated knowledge or screamed for progress and realism. Cyclops reigned on every sige. His only escape was to draw within himself and develop a barrier of affectations as a shield against his surroundings. Then he had met a girl. She had noticed his strangeness and the difference between him and his classmates. Her interest grew; she studied him as she might a new and different kind of toy. Here was an interesting diversion. Her friends would be hilarious when she told about him. She put herself in his way and did little things to attract his notice. Women had always been strange animals that filled with fear. They had always ignored him; so when she began to smile encouragingly, he was fearful, but he rose to the bait with hungry heart and questing mind. There was now stirring within him something of that feeling Adam must of had on first beholding Eve. He had become weak with the anticipation of knowing her. He had sought after her, but was held off. She decided to lead him on and so agreed to his trembling request for a date to walk on the mountain path. Ahead of time he waited at the appointed place, trembling and pale. Criss-crossed shadows of overhead branches made varied figures, most often that of a cross over his face, a face set in tense anxiety. Not the mere anxiety of a first date, but the anxiety built out of a life's frustration. He viewed his watch with increasing frequency. The date was for eight o'clock. It was now one minute to eight. His blood began to race and his face to tingle. Cold sweat belied the warmness of the night. Was he being stood up? Life had always played him for a fool. One more glance at his watch. The minute hand was straight up and down. Through a red haze flitted the images of other disappointments. He stood, breast heaving, face distorted, eyes closed. On opening them he beheld before him a tiny bird asleep on a twig. He reached out. His fingers closed about it and silently tightened. God, where wast thou then? Was this part of thy plan? The splintering sound of crushing bones, snapping and ripping, was the only accompaniment to his heavy breathing. The grasp did not loosen till splinters had pierced his hand and his blood mingled with that of his victim. So had the world treated him. The night was hushed; all of Nature's loneliness listened to the sound of his stumbling flight up the path. The tiny creature was lying in its own blood, splashed with soft light, when around the bend stepped the girl. She stopped nervously in the shadows. Her watch indicated two minutes after eight. Doubt as to the- wisdom of her action was beginning to assail her. What if she could not control him! His actions were too unpredictable for her to imagine what he would do next. She remembered the time when he had waded into a stream, fully clothed, to rescue a cur in contrast to a more recent time when she had observed him stoning a pedigreed collie dog as it tried to escape among the buildings. Another time he had been caught damaging a flower garden; and it was rumored he had in his room a large number of potted plants which he tended with exquisite care. She determined to leave, for the initial fascination of his strangeness was displaced by dread of his appearance. The shadows and the moonlight and the almost strident stillness of things stimulated her mind to apprehensions that made her afraid. Beside the path she saw the broken body of the bird washed in a light that made the earth unearthly. She picked it up and stood holding for a moment the still-warm, sticky, lifeless mass. Then she fled in terror. Far along the path wandered one of the world's outsiders. Destiny had decreed at birth that he live his life apart. Pace Nineteen