"I'm happy to hear it," he said. And he was.

Miss Bridgewater adjusted her glasses and peered at him. "And when would I begin if . . . if . . ."

"Sunday after next, I should think."

"Well!" she said, sitting back and beaming. "Well!"

The everlasting rain was still going strong at four-thirty, when he pulled into Ernie's for a gallon of milk.

Roger Templeton sat in the corner by a small pile of wood shavings, and looked up when he came in.

"Tim! Glad to see you! How's your weather?"

"You mean my own, apart from the elements? I'd say . . . sunny!" Hadn't God just delivered an organist to St. John's?

He scratched Lucas behind the ears, then pulled up a chair next to Roger, peering into Roger's lap at what had been a block of wood. The rough form of a duck, though headless, had emerged, its right wing beginning to assume feathers.

"Amazing! May I have a look?"

"Help yourself," said Roger, pleased to be asked.

He took the duck and examined it closely. In principle, at least, this was how David had escaped from Michelangelo's block of marble.

"That's tupelo wood," said Roger. "I get it from up around Albemarle Sound. With tupelo, you can cut across the grain, with the grain, or against the grain."

"It's beautiful!" he said. How had Roger known the wood contained a duck just waiting to get out?

"That's a green-winged teal. It's not much to look at yet; I've rough-edged it with a band saw and now I'm carving in the feather groupings."

"How did you know you could do this?"

Roger took a knife from an old cigar box next to his chair. "I didn't. I'd never done anything with my hands."

"Except make money," said Ernie, walking in from the book room. He thumped down at the table.

"I used to go on hunting trips with my colleagues . . . Alaska, Canada, the eastern shore of Maryland around St. Michael's and Easton. I recall the day I dropped a green-winged teal into the river. When the Lab brought it to me, I saw for the first time the great beauty of it. My eyes were opened in a new way, and I wondered how I'd managed to . . . do what I'd been doing."

"Aha."

"Oh, I'm not preaching a sermon against hunting, Tim. Let a man hunt! I also have a special fondness for a boy learning to hunt. But I quit right there at the river, I said if God Almighty could make just one feather, not to mention a whole duck, as intricate and beautiful as that, who am I to bring it down?"

"He still fishes," said Ernie.

"Why did you start carving?"

Roger shrugged. "I wanted to see how close I could come to the real thing. I thought I'd try to make just one and then quit."

"I see."

"But I never seem to come very close to the real thing, so I keep trying."

Father Tim had never done much with his hands, either, except turn the pages of a book or plant a rosebush. "How long does it take to make one?"

"Oh, five or six weeks, sometimes longer."

"He works on 'is ducks in my place, exclusive," said Ernie, as if that lent a special distinction to Ernie's Books, Bait & Tackle.

"Do you also work at home?"

Roger colored slightly. "I paint at home, but my wife doesn't allow carving."

He'd heard of not being allowed to smoke cigars at home, but he'd never heard of a ban on duck carving.

"Roger, my wife has bought me a chair on Captain Willie's fishing boat. You ever go deep-sea fishing?"

"Does a hog love slop?" asked Ernie, who didn't care to be out of the loop in any conversation.

"Captain Willie has taken me out to the Gulf Stream many times."

"I don't mind telling you I'm no fisherman. I've never spent much time around water."

"That's no liability. Sport fishing is all about relaxing and having fun. It's an adventure."

An adventure! He'd always wanted to have an adventure, but wasn't good at figuring out how to get from A to B. Leave it to his wife to figure it out for him.

"I hear a lot about spending the day with your head over the side."

Roger and Ernie laughed. "Don't listen to that mess," said Ernie. "You stay sober the night before and get a good night's sleep and you'll be fine."

"And don't eat a greasy breakfast," said Roger. "Besides, if it's any comfort, statistics say only twelve percent get seasick."

He was encouraged.

"What'll we see out there?"

"Out in the Gulf," said Ernie, "you'll see your blue marlin, your white marlin, your sailfish, your dolphin-"

"There's wahoo," said Roger, "and yellow tuna-"

"Plus your black tuna and albacore tuna. . . ."

"Man. Big stuff !" He was feeling twelve years old.

Roger whittled. "You can see everything from a thousand-pound blue marlin to a two-pound mahimahi."

"No kidding? But what kind of fish can you actually catch?"

"Whatever God grants you that day," said Roger. "Of course, we always release marlin."

"Fair enough. What sort of boat would we go in?"

"Captain Willie runs a Carolina hull built over on Roanoke Island. About fifty-three feet long-"

"-an' eight hundred and fifty horsepower!" Ernie appeared to take personal pride in this fact. "What you might call a glorified speedboat."

"Eight hundred and fifty horsepower? Man!" He was losing his vocabulary, fast.

Roger adjusted his glasses and looked at Father Tim. "Just show up ready to have a good time. That's what I'd recommend."

"And be sure an' take a bucket of fried chicken," said Ernie.

He cooked the requisite bowl of spaghetti while Jonathan sat in the window seat and colored a batch of Cynthia's hasty sketches. Something baking in the oven made his heart beat faster.

"Cassoulet!" said his creative wife. Though she'd never attempted such a thing, she had every confidence it would be sensational. "Fearless in the kitchen" was how she once described herself.

"It's all in the crust, the way the crust forms on top," she told him, allowing a peek into the oven. "I know it's too hot to have the oven going, but I couldn't resist."

"Where on earth did you find duck?"

"At the little market. It was lying right by the mahimahi. Isn't that wonderful?"

He certainly wouldn't mention it to Roger.

Jonathan had clambered down from the window seat. "Watch a movie!" he said, giving a tug on Father Tim's pants leg.

"Timothy, we've got to get a VCR. Could you possibly go across tomorrow, to whatever store carries these things? I don't think I can make it 'til Monday without in-house entertainment!"

"Do we just plug it in?" He'd never been on friendly terms with high technology, which was always accompanied by manuals printed in Croatian.

"Beats me," she said. "That's your job. I'm the stay-at-home mommy."

He put his arms around her and traced the line of her cheek with his nose. "Thank you for being the best deacon in the entire Anglican communion."

Jonathan had wanted his mother tonight; his tears called up a few of Father Tim's very own.

He thought it must be agony to be small and helpless, with no mother, no father, no brother or sister to be found. He held Jonathan against his chest, over his heart, and let the boy sob until he exhausted his tears.

He walked with him through the house in a five-room circle, crooning snatches of hymns, small prayers and benedictions, fragments of stories about Pooh and Toad and that pesky rabbit, Peter. He didn't know what to do with a child who was crying out of bewilderment and loss, except to be with him in it.

He covered the sleeping boy with a light blanket, praying silently. Then he closed the door and tiptoed down the hall and out to the porch where Cynthia sat waiting, a rain-drugged Violet slumbering in her lap.

Barnabas followed and sprawled at his feet.

What peace to retire into the cool August evening, after a dinner that might have been served in the Languedoc.

For the first time today, he liked the rain, it was friend and shelter to him, enclosing the porch with a gossamer veil.

They watched the distant patch of gray Atlantic turn to platinum in the lingering dusk.

"Weary, darling?" she asked, taking his hand.

"I am. Don't know why, though. Haven't done much today."

"You do more than you realize. Up at dawn, morning prayer, feed and bathe the boy, help the wife, write the pew bulletin, work on your sermon, hire an organist . . ."

He took her hand and kissed it. Of all the earthly consolations, he loved understanding best. Not sympathy, no, that could be deadly. But understanding. It was balm to him, and he had sucked it up like a toad, often denying it to her.

"Your book-how are you feeling about it?" he asked.

"I guess I don't know why I'm doing another book when I might have the lovely freedom to do nothing. I suppose I got excited about being in a new place, the way the light changes, and the coming and going of the tide. It spoke to me and I couldn't help myself." She smiled at him. "I think I make books because I don't know what else to do."

"You know how to make a ravishing cassoulet."

"Yes, but cassoulet has its limitations. Little books do not."

He nodded.

"Do you think we'll ever just loll about?" she asked.

"I don't think we're very good at lolling."

She put her head back and closed her eyes. "Thank God for this peace."

He heard it first, even through the loud whisper of rain. It was the organ music of their neighbor. He sat up, alert, and cupped his hand to his ear.

"What is it, Timothy?"

"It's Morris Love, in the house behind the wall. Listen."

They sat silent for long moments.

"Wondrous," she said quietly.

The rain seemed to abate out of respect for the music, and they began to hear the notes more clearly.

"Name that tune," she said.

" 'Jesus My Joy.' A Bach chorale prelude." He couldn't help but hear the urgency-in truth, a kind of fury-underlying the music. He told her what he knew about Morris Love, leaving out the part about him shouting through the hedge.

"Is Mr. Love a concert organist?"

"Not unless you consider this a private concert for the Kavanaghs."

"What a lovely thought," she said, pleased.

When the phone rang, he fumbled for it. For a moment, he was at home in Mitford and expected to find it next to the bed. But blast, he was in Whitecap, and the phone was across the room.

It rang again; he bumped into the chair and tried to figure what time it was. The rain had stopped, and a stiff breeze blew through the windows.