'Have you ever figured out why people get so excited about the manatees? They're not the world's most attractive water animals.'

'I've often thought about it, especially today. I think it comes down to the problem of beauty.'

'That's a word you can't use for those creatures.'

'Yes. And that's the precise problem. Why did our people crowd down here to watch the manatees? They're probably the ugliest creatures on earth, but more compelling than a fish of elegant design. Is it something primordial that attracts, as with an elephant, for example? No way can the elephant be called beautiful, but he's so commanding. Magnitude also counts. And so, too, God forgive me for admitting it, does color.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'If you'd been here today you'd have heard them. Whenever one of those stately white egrets came to stand by me, hoping for a fish, the folks cried: "Isn't that bird the most beautiful thing?" But let a blue heron stop by, an infinitely better-engineered bird, and no one comments on his beauty, because he's the wrong color. What did Muley Duggan call that masterful fellow from our Heronry over there? "A village policeman on stilts." A dark blue heron has got to be as valuable to God in His animal kingdom as any white egret, yet we refuse to admit it.'

'Do you mean to say that being black affects even a man of superior qualities like you?'

'Every day. And I think it comes back to that word beauty and people's reluctance to term a bird with black coloring beautiful.'

'By the way, how did you become a federal judge?'

'It goes way back to when I was a draftee in the navy in World War Two, eighteen years old and stuck away in the South Pacific serving on an ammunition boat. The white Southern officers of the navy refused to believe we colored could fight, or that decent southern white boys who made up so much of the navy would ever serve with us. So we manned the ammunition boats, and one after another of those dreadful ships exploded, killing us in the hundreds and thousands. If we were lucky, we might land a job as waiter in an officers' mess.

'Somebody told me years later that I ought to go see that new musical South Pacific, and I did, but I walked out. That wasn't the South Pacific I saw. I was belowdecks hoisting ammo and wondering when ours was going to blow sky-high.'

'You mean that's all you did, work on ammo ships or in an officers' mess?'

'Yes, the big brass had decided that's all we could be used for-the limit of our capacities.'

'How did that lead to a federal judgeship?'

Noble was diverted for a moment by his pelican Rowdy as he dived for a fish. When the bird came up with a big one, the judge called out: 'Go to it, Rowdy!' Then he returned to Dr. Zorn: 'My redemption started when I began going to the chaplain's office, the black chaplain that is, to see the weekly New York Times Sunday edition, flown in a month late. Officers who saw me checking out the Times thought: That guy Noble is trying to make something of himself, but what they didn't know was that I was there to grab the magazine section before the other guys tore it apart. We all wanted to see those gorgeous long-legged blond girls nearly naked in their lingerie ads. One sailor joked: "The white kids all rush for the National Geographic to see what naked black girls look like, but we rush for the Times to see the white girls." '

Then, as a trailing manatee wallowed by, he said almost bitterly: 'The cruel fact of life, Dr. Zorn, is that most of the girls in the world are not beautiful. They're not tall, and leggy, and blond, just as the manatee out there is not beautiful. But society conspires to force on us the concept that white is beautiful and black is something else. Damn it, if even today I want to visualize a really beautiful girl I go back to the lingerie ads in the Times.'

At this point, when the manatees had completed their ponderous parade, he caught a fish on his line, so a group of ever-watchful egrets and herons flew in to demand their share of the bounty. As the judge took out his penknife to cut portions for the benefit of all, he gasped: 'My God, Zorn! Isn't that egret magnificent with the sun on her white feathers, turning them to silver! And isn't that black heron at a terrible disadvantage?' Reflecting on this, he savagely cut his fish in two, throwing the larger half to the heron, the smaller to the egret, and when Rowdy came blustering in and landing in the water with a big splash like a damaged floatplane, the judge snarled at him: 'And you, you clumsy oaf, you don't even qualify.'

'Can I help you carry some of that gear back to your room?' Zorn asked, and he picked up the binoculars and the shortwave radio, leaving the judge to handle his fishing pole, one he had acquired forty years ago and had used in many streams. As they walked toward Gateways, Zorn said: 'You still haven't told me how your duty in the ammo ships in the South Pacific led to the federal bench.'

'In a very roundabout way. When some of us blacks got fed up with running the risk, day after day in those steaming ports, of being blown up, we protested what we saw as unfair treatment. White officers from the South who hadn't wanted to be assigned to the ships, either, charged us with mutiny, and they might have made it stick, except that a young white lawyer who had also been drafted and who came by the office to read The New York Times and knew me to be a decent man, asked to defend me at the court-martial. He argued so beautifully, so persuasively that when the case ended, with me set free, I told him: "Come peace, I want to be a lawyer like you," and he said: "With the recent GI Bill providing a free education when this is over, you can do it." We kept in touch, and years later he brought me to the attention of Lyndon Johnson, who appointed me to be one of his federal judges.'

As the judge finished his explanation, Zorn felt the urge to ask him why he had left the federal bench. Zorn had heard whispers that there had been some sort of scandal, and when he looked into Noble's eyes, he thought he saw signs of profound regret, as if the judge were still under a heavy burden, but Zorn refrained from questioning him. It's strange, Zorn thought, other federal judges, when they retire from duty fifty-two weeks a year, elect to remain on the available list, and from time to time they are summoned to places where the backload of cases is immense and they provide valued assistance, but Judge Noble never seems to be called-I wonder why.

Darkness had now settled and as he and Noble looked at the outline of the Palms in the late glow, he said: 'Thanks to your work today, Judge, the people in there are a little more aware that they must respect the natural world. Thanks.'

As they went indoors to prepare for dinner, the birds flew off to their nests and the manatees moved ever closer to the warm waters in which they would spend the winter.

In early October, when Berta Umlauf turned eighty-one, it seemed as if the accumulated burdens she had assumed during the three prolonged deaths in the Umlauf family came roaring back for a delayed attack on her general health, her teeth, her eyes and her nervous system. Of course, prudent woman that she had always been and now a wealthy one, too, she took care of herself. She consulted an ophthalmologist, who gave her good news: 'Strong eyes, no glaucoma, no cataracts, no detached retinas, but tired nerves. While there's no danger of your going blind, you will never again see as well as you used to, but with better glasses you'll be more than able to function.'

She also went to see Dr. Velenius, the skilled dentist in the village east of Tampa. Learning from his allies in the Palms that she was truly a wealthy widow, he did some basic work for her and charged her outrageously, but she was inattentive and paid it. When Andy learned that she had become a patient of Velenius he did an imprudent thing: 'Am I being too nosy, Mrs. Umlauf, if I asked what your dentist charged for his services?' and she thought so little of the inquiry that she showed him the bill. For routine services that would have cost, at most, two hundred dollars in Chicago, he had charged eight hundred, convincing her that she was on the verge of losing important teeth, which had been her suspicion all along and the reason she had gone to him in the first place. Had he been asked about his fee he would have said: 'Giving her reassurance and eliminating certain real dangers was worth every penny she paid.'

But the danger to her nervous system was real. She suffered dizzy spells, unsteadiness in her legs and flashing spots before her eyes that did not arise from ocular problems. On two occasions she fainted in her room without having received even the slightest warning of such a collapse. In fact, she scarcely knew that she had fainted, and had she not found herself on the floor she would have been unaware of it.

She was frightened and consulted immediately with Dr. Farquhar. As always he was thorough, perceptive and helpful: Berta, since that day you visited me when your life seemed an overwhelming tangle, I've been aware that you were susceptible to nervous exhaustion. You push yourself too hard, and your two fainting spells alert me to the fact that you may be pumping an inadequate supply of blood to your brain. If that's true, and you persist, you could be a candidate for a stroke. I'm going to give you the full battery of tests starting tomorrow. First the stress test, to see if it's coronary in cause. Then a standard EKG to check your heart. Then I want you to go into Tampa for a test of your carotid arteries, to be sure you're getting enough blood upstairs to the head. After that, and we hope those signs will all be satisfactory, I want you to have an MRI scan of your brain to check on any obvious problems, and again I feel confident we'll find nothing grievous.'

'Is that the one where Ludwig tore the place apart?'

'No. The CAT scan isn't as sophisticated. The MRI is a very advanced test that produces excellent, clear images of the brain. It isn't as easy a test to take, but we have highly skilled technicians who make the experience quite tolerable.' He reflected for a moment and added: 'Of course, if you are subject to claustrophobia, tell us now, because you'll never be able to endure the locked-in feeling. No shame to beg off. Are you susceptible?'

She laughed: 'What I'm susceptible to is Brussels sprouts,' and the regimen of tests was scheduled, but before it could be half completed she awoke one night in a sweating, gasping panic, for she seemed unable to breathe. Obviously oxygen was getting through to her lungs, for she did not faint or collapse, but the sensation of strangulation continued, making continued sleep impossible. By frantic experimentation she learned that she could resist the attack by propping pillows behind her back and head and sleeping with her torso in an upright position. As a woman used to facing crises, she did not tug on the alarm cord, which would have summoned help from the main desk.

She did, however, go next morning to consult again with Dr. Farquhar and realized anew what a difference a good doctor can make. After much thumping and listening, he told her: 'I hear liquid in your lungs, not such a vast amount as to scare us, but there it is, and it's got to be driven out or real complications will set in,' and it was only then that both the doctor and the patient discovered her ankles were badly swollen.

'That confirms it, Berta. Congestive heart failure,' but before these ugly words could frighten her he added, almost with a chuckle: 'Horrible name for a very common ailment. We have drugs to drive the excess liquid out of your body and another medication to calm your heart. I have patients who've had congestive failure for thirty years.' When he handed her the two prescriptions he warned: 'There's one danger in the diuretic I'm giving you, that's the liquid expellant. It carries away not only the excess liquid but also the body's supply of potassium. So you must supplement your diet with BOB-plenty of bananas, oranges and beans-especially bananas.'

'No problem. I like them all,' and when the swelling in her ankles subsided and the accumulation of liquid left her lungs, her spells of constricted breathing vanished and she had no more midnight bouts of terror.

But her hard life and her continued assistance to others had depleted her physical reserves, and controlling her treatments could not attack her basic problem: that her genetic clock, which had been set at birth to allow some eighty years of arduous exertion, was sending signals that it was about to run down. Curiously, it was she and not Dr. Farquhar who interpreted these signals properly. So when Noel and his wife, Gretchen, paid their regular visit to the Palms, she told them, with no dramatics: 'I feel the power supply is draining away. Too many demands in too many areas.'

'Mom!' Noel protested, 'you're the type who begins to slow down in her late nineties.'

'But if I'm reading the signals correctly, I'll be moving in the not-too-distant future to the second floor over there, Assisted Living, and when that time comes I want you to dispose of this fine apartment. No regrets. I've had a damned good time here, it owes me nothing.'

'Mother,' Gretchen cried, 'you'll be living here till you're ninety-five. Remember I said so.'

'No, I've observed that movement from Gateways to Assisted Living is usually irreversible. Dr. Zorn and Mr. Krenek deny that. They always say when a resident moves over: "This is temporary. We'll hold your apartment." But they know and we know that the movement is always in the other direction. We don't return here. We move upstairs to Extended Care.'

'Mother, don't talk so fatalistically. You're decades removed from the third floor.'

'No, Gretchen, I've worked there. I know the probabilities,' and four days after Noel and Gretchen left, she had a major setback, which made continued living in Gateways, with no assistance at night, impractical. The ominous first step in the long retreat from life had become inescapable, but she did not grieve when two male helpers from the main desk arrived at her apartment with a stretcher to transport her to the Health building. She laughed and told them firmly: 'I refuse to ride in your carriage through the buildings. It would depress my friends,' and she insisted that they take the stretcher away. Assisted by only one of the men, she walked with a steady step to the elevator on her floor, then along the length of the corridor leading to the Health building and into the elevator that would take her to her future home, a nicely furnished two-room suite in Assisted Living. Had she disposed of her apartment in Gateways, she could have made the switch from normal to Assisted at minimal additional cost, but her family had adamantly refused to let her abandon her quarters: 'You'll be back here,' they had argued, and since she could afford the double cost, she did not demur, but she did resolve to get rid of that apartment as soon as they were not looking.

It was when she settled into the routines of Assisted Living that she appreciated what this halfway house had to offer, and one morning when she watched the trained nurses perform their functions so effortlessly, caring for the needs of a dozen patients, she burst into tears.

'Mrs. Umlauf! What's happened? Sudden pain?'

She reached out and grasped a nurse's hand, pressed it to her lips: 'I was thinking of the needless agony I suffered in that house over there on Island Five, the one by the water with the red roof.' As other nurses gathered at the window to see the old Umlauf house, Berta said: 'I went through hell in that little paradise, helping two miserable people die, with me their only aid, responsible for everything, when all the time this facility was over here, just waiting to be used.' She shook her head: 'It was as if you young women were screaming in the night air: "Hey, dummy! Here we are, eager to ease your burden." '

'And you never heard us?' the nurses asked, and Berta said grimly: 'Oh, I heard you all right. Loud and clear. The voices of reason. But the ones who were dying refused to listen or allow me to listen. They rebuffed me with one of the cruelest phrases I'll ever hear: "What would the people back home think if we were put in a nursing home?" They were more concerned about supposed friends in Marquette in northern Michigan than they were about me, or, really, about themselves. And Marquette was nearly a thousand miles away.' She paused, chuckled sardonically and told the nurses: 'And I'll bet there couldn't have been six people in Marquette who would have given a damn if my mother-in-law and my husband had been over here in these fine quarters.'

One of the advantages of life in Assisted Living, she was discovering, was that Dr. Farquhar stopped by two or three times a week and could spend more time in a patient's room than he had ever been able to manage in his crowded office: 'You're so available, Doctor, and you're so reassuring.' He was more than that, a paradigm of what a doctor should be, willing to make new diagnoses if earlier ones proved non-productive, always prepared to ask for the opinion of another doctor, and not unwilling to look into new drugs that his patients had read about in Reader's Digest or Prevention. One day he laughed at a suggestion Berta made: 'I should subscribe to both those magazines. They account for about half the calls I get: "Dr. Farquhar, did you read about this new miracle drug for bronchitis?" The new drug rarely accomplishes anything, but also rarely does any serious damage, so I prescribe it. Makes them happier.'

Berta felt he performed minor miracles in keeping her alive and able to function, shifting medication when she failed to respond to what she was taking and monitoring her vital signs. One day she told her nurse: 'When I watch Dr. Farquhar, I have the feeling that I'm looking over the shoulder of Hippoc-rates, the father of you all.'

But as before, Farquhar could accomplish only so much, and the time came in early November when he had to summon her children, Noel and Gretchen, to share with them the bad news: 'Your mother is declining rapidly. She no longer responds to normal medication, and we see no probability that her vital responses will improve.'

Noel tried to put the doctor at ease: 'She predicted quite a while ago that her genetic clock, as she called it, was running down and would one of these days stop ticking altogether. She's highly satisfied with what you're doing to help her, so let's continue. You may be sure you have the full confidence of the whole family.'

'But things aren't going as well as you and she might think. She may have a relapse.'

These words were so chilling, coming from a low-key person like Farquhar, that the two Umlaufs had no immediate response. But the crucial question had to be asked: 'Dr. Farquhar, are you trying to let us down easy, that Mom hasn't much longer to live?'

'I'm making no predictions as to time, but yes, she is fading.'

'And you're preparing us for the fact that she might, one of these days, have to be moved upstairs to Extended Care?'

'Yes, that was my next point.'

Noel broke down and could not speak, but Gretchen said: 'We've never talked about this among ourselves, but I guess we've always known. You think it's inescapable?'

'Yes. The system in Assisted Living is not able to provide the necessary care. We'll have to move her.'

'This relapse-can you guess how soon it might occur?' Gretchen asked as the take-charge member of the Umlauf team.

'We never know. It could be postponed indefinitely, but we must play the averages, and in Berta's case-what a fighting little woman she is-'

The three sat silent, no one wishing to probe the next inevitable problem, but after some moments Noel, recalling the oath they had taken in Berta's living room, said quietly: 'Mom prepared a living will. My copy is in a safe back home and I believe hers is in her room. Should I bring it to you?'

Dr. Farquhar responded reassuringly, 'Noel, she's nowhere near that extremity-could be even years from it. She's a tremendous fighter. Ordinary rules don't apply to rare individuals like her.'

'If she might have to move up to the third floor-'

'Noel, you haven't heard me. She must be moved up by tomorrow night. There is no option.'

The two Umlaufs sat silent. They were prepared emotionally to hear these words, had even speculated on them when Dr. Farquhar summoned them, but they found it difficult to accept the fact they applied to tough little Berta Umlauf with her record of fighting off the inevitable.

Seeing their downcast faces, Farquhar tried again to reassure them: 'She's moving to Extended Living, but it's not a death sentence. Berta may have many happy, full years ahead of her.'

But it didn't work out that way, because shortly after midnight the older Mrs. Umlauf underwent what one of the aides termed 'a humongous heart attack,' which left her near death and so incapacitated that she had to be taken by ambulance to a local hospital. When Dr. Farquhar rushed there to tend her he saw at once that recovery was improbable. But subsequent days proved what a determined fighter Berta was, for she rallied, reestablished satisfactory heart rhythms, and in time became stable enough to be transferred back to the Palms, where accommodation was provided in Extended Care on the third floor.

Unfortunately, her tough mind did not make the trip with her; it had been lost in this latest series of shocks, and when she was finally bedded down in Room 312 on the third floor, she no longer had the capacity to remember her association with the room once occupied by Mrs. Carlson, who still clung to life in a much smaller room because her funds were running out.

One evening when Andy brought Betsy home from a movie at the mall, she invited him to accompany her and together they went to her apartment in the Peninsula, with its view of both the river and the handsome entryway of tall palms and colorful oleanders. She handed him the key and when he pushed the door open she asked casually: 'Would you like a glass of white wine?'

He accepted eagerly. Inside her apartment, she used her cane to slam the door closed, and then, with a pronounced gesture of independence, put the cane aside and moved about the room in her own secure but cautious way. Sitting on the couch, he watched with admiration as she walked to her kitchenette and opened a bottle of white wine with a corkscrew and then set the bottle on a tray with two glasses. As he watched her approach him, operating her legs carefully, he thought: How beautiful she is! When she came here last May her face was pallid, pasty. Now her long, successful battle has transformed it into true beauty, like something carved out of marble.

This happy thought made him smile, and when she asked why he seemed so pleased, he explained: 'I was thinking how beautiful you've become since coming down here, and how your mature new face reminds me of a handsome carving in marble.'

'Well, it's a good thing you said marble, and not granite, because granite would have put me alongside those presidents on Mount Rushmore.'

Andy laughed and said, 'That reminds me of one of my mother's favorite jokes. She loved words and this always tickled her: "Our Uncle Josh worked in a quarry but they had to fire him," and I was expected to ask "Why?" and she would say: "They couldn't trust his judgment. He took everything for granite." She thought that was a real knee-slapper.'

Betsy chuckled. 'I love those wonderful rural jokes,' she said. 'I had a maiden aunt who used to play ask-me games with my sisters and me: "What did the carpet say to the floor?" and she'd reply with the greatest enthusiasm: "Don't make a move, Buster. I've got you covered." She was also very big on: "What did the hat say to the hat rack? You stay here, I'll go on ahead." But she had other goodies, too.'

Andy returned to his earlier comment: 'You really are far more beautiful than when you arrived. Yancey has done wonders.'

Very carefully she said: 'I believe the greater doctor was you,' and when he protested she said: 'In those days when life was pure hell I found only one ray of hope. My image of you. I hadn't a clue as to what you looked like, only that you had come out of nowhere to save my life. I didn't need to know how you looked, I could feel your hands lifting me up. I could feel you throw your coat about my legs gushing blood. I could hear your voice assuring me that I would walk again. On those memories I constructed a dream world. There was someone out there who understood me, who had saved me, a make-believe hero except that I had proof he was real. My job was to find him.'

He reached across and embraced her ardently: 'I'll be forever grateful you did find me. That you did is far more important to me than to you.'

'Is that really true?'

'Oh, yes!'

She kissed him, and snuggled happily into his arms. She continued her story: 'Dad hired a detective to see what could be found, and he learned from Dr. Zembright that you'd been a doctor in Chicago and that you'd quit your practice to work at something else in Florida. After that you were easy to find.'

Zorn drew back and looked at Betsy with an old fear: 'Then if you'd wanted to sue me for intervening, you could have. You'd have had my full identification.'

'What are you talking about?' and he told her of the warning Dr. Zembright had given him about never interfering in a roadside accident because he might be sued. 'Oh, Andy! What a horrid thought. You saved my life. You're why I'm here today-why I'm alive.' She kissed him, kept her head close to his and whispered: 'As long as I live, Andy, my life will be bound to yours-no escape for me-and I hope none for you.'

Then came the moment of decision. She rose, put aside the glasses and walked slowly toward her bedroom door, clearly meaning that he should follow. He did not move. She saw his hesitancy and they stood transfixed, each in a turmoil of fear and indecision. She thought: Is it possible that he can't see me as a woman? And she trembled at the real question: Can a man love a woman with no legs?

And he was assailed by his own apprehensions: Could I support her emotionally for a lifetime? Is she suffering from girlhood fantasies-a dream concocted in her delirium? I failed in one marriage, even though it had once looked as if it would last forever. Was it a terrible mistake to allow her to come down here with her fantasies? Has she any concept of who I really am?

But in this long, agonizing pause, other, more powerful emotions took over, and she spoke in strong, clear accents: 'Andy, you're even better than I dreamed back in Chattanooga. You're a man among men, I see it when you talk with residents, when you visit patients upstairs. You're the man I longed to find, and I can't let you go! I love you!'

He moved forward to take her hand and he said: 'It's terrible it took me so long to wake up, but thank God you found me.' And he pulled her to him hungrily.

When he left her apartment early the next morning they both knew they were truly in love, a fact that would be affirmed on many following nights, but each was also sadly aware that there were many obstacles to a lifelong marriage. But as they kissed in parting, each could be sure that the other shared a great love.

Like millions of men and women who cherish their formal education because they remember it as the means of escape from drab lives, Judge Lincoln Noble felt that a man's spiritual year began not in January but in October, and he had always approached each autumn with heightened anticipation, as if the days were now doubly meaningful. He had ample cause for such feeling, because most of the good things in his life had come in October.

Now in the cool, crisp middle of that month, so welcome after the sizzling summer, as he lounged in Nurse Varney's office his mind went back to that unbroken chain of meaningful autumns. 'I remember when I was six,' he told the nurse, 'and Mother said as she neatened up my new shirt and pants for my first day of school: "Lincoln, what you begin on this day will decide what kind of man you'll grow up to be." '

Nora said: 'I had that kind of mother. Goaded me into nursing school, thank God.'

Like other residents, he enjoyed talking with the nurse, not only because she was a fellow black with experiences somewhat comparable to his, but also because she was an extremely understanding person, whether her visitor was black or white, male or female, young or old.

He continued with his reminiscences: 'The October when I turned twelve was memorable. Then I moved into Thomas Jefferson Junior High and Miss Lear growled at us: "The easy classes are over. Now you have to bear down and really work," and she was right, because my lifelong study habits were formed in those three years by Miss Allen in English and young Mr. Barney in math. You understand, this was in Mississippi, and everyone, teachers and students, was black like me.'

'Same with me in Alabama, and I never thought it did much damage, except that never in my schooling did I have a new book of my own. Always one ten years old that had been used up by the white children and handed down to us.'

'Now, the autumn I started Kennedy High was a revelation, because on opening day the first thing I saw in the classroom was a vision, Edith Baxter, a fifteen-year-old angel come to our town.' He stopped as memories of that day flooded back. Then he coughed and almost whispered: 'Very black hair bobbed in front, pigtails in back. Light complexion, and movements that made her seem as if she was floating. But when I asked the other boys who she was, they told me: "Bad news. Her father's no good, neither's her mother." And during my three years at Kennedy I had ample proof of those harsh judgments, because her parents really were rotters, in constant trouble, big trouble. But she seemed to sail serenely by, like one of those yachts we see sailing up our channel, untroubled by the storms out in the bay.' He paused again. 'So I remained friendly with her in spite of what Mother preached: "You stay away from that child. She come from trash, she be trash. She tainted, like her folks." I never resolved the mystery, because Edith did good work in school and sang in the church choir. But everyone except me continued to think her tainted.

'My record at Kennedy was so strong-I graduated from high school with honors-that all my teachers, and the principal too, urged me to go on to college, and I wanted to but a problem came up.'

'I know,' the nurse said. 'You might call it "the black problem, money." Your folks didn't have any. Mine neither.'

'Money was a definite problem, but World War Two was an even more immediate problem and I got drafted. I can still recall the day in October when I got back home after my tour in the Pacific. It burns like a slow, never-dying ember close to my soul, always there, always smoldering. Mother took me aside and pointed to my two sisters, each older than me, each a fine person, Kate and Esmerelda. She said: "Lincoln, you got to go to college, but we don't have the money and your GI Bill won't pay for everything. I've been asking around the community and good people are willing to give you nearly a hundred dollars. Your sisters say they'll help from the tips they make. So you go over to Jackson and tell them you're there for an education. It's late, maybe too late, but if they look at your record, they'll find a place. I know it." So that night my sisters helped me pack. It didn't take long because I didn't have much, and the next morning I kissed Mom and the girls good-bye-' His voice broke and for some moments he sat looking through tears at the nurse, who understood such moments. Finally he said: 'The girls, and you know this is true, they were as bright as me. They were girls of wonderful character, and it was the tips they got in the restaurants where they worked that allowed me to attend college.'

Nora suggested they have coffee and some cookies she'd baked, and after this pleasant recess. Judge Noble continued: 'Those autumns in college were glorious, each one opening a new vista on an enlarging world. Ideas, moral problems, dedications. My character was hauled out, examined, fumigated and tucked back into place a lot better off than when I started. I couldn't explain to my family the great things that were happening to me. All they could see were my semester grades and since they tended to be three A's and a B, they were satisfied that they were making a good investment in keeping me in college.

'My record looked so good on paper that I was offered two scholarships to law school, and when I showed Mom and the girls the letters that made the offers official, we had a celebration. "You'll be on the Supreme Court one of these days," Sister Kate predicted and we didn't go to bed till midnight. When I entered law school I discovered that in comparison with white students from colleges like Yale, Williams and Duke I was deficient in the kind of general background knowledge that came from vacations in Europe with wide travel and visits to museums and theaters, but in my ability to study hard and learn at a fast pace I had to apologize to no one. I gained a spot on the law review, and after graduation I was invited by a judge on the Alabama Supreme Court to serve as his clerk. Then my year really did start in the autumn, for then the court reassembled after the summer vacation and cases began to be heard and decisions written.

'All good things in my life sprang from that appointment as clerk to a white judge. Acting as my mentor, my judge introduced me to major law firms in the South, assuring me: "They'll be hungry to land a good black lawyer, Lincoln. Keep your nose clean." So I vaulted right into an apprenticeship in a big New Orleans firm, and from that into a federal judgeship. How did that happen? During my stint in the navy I'd made a strong impression on a young white officer. People back home told my mother: "Nothing can stop Lincoln now," but they didn't know Windy Wilson. He sure had the power to stop me.'

'I read about him in the papers,' the nurse said. 'Was much of it true?'

'As you know, if you followed the case, all of it was lies. The FBI proved my innocence beyond question. But the damage had been done. When the story first broke there were calls for my impeachment-in all the papers, television, Sunday news sections-and to this day most people believe that I was actually impeached.'

'I've heard it whispered here at the Palms. Many people have been accused of things they haven't done. What matters is, they blustered about impeaching you but they didn't do it. You're home free. You kept your seat on the court, didn't you?'

This was true, though it was something of a hollow victory. But at that moment he was driven to concentrate on the real crime he had committed, the deep kind that can scar a man's soul: 'In Kennedy High, when I was fifteen years old I fell deeply, passionately in love with Edith Baxter, and I think she liked me, too, but pressure from everyone scared me away. We had a few secret dates, saw each other as much as possible, and I learned that she had even vaster dreams than me. She wanted to be free of rural Mississippi and change the world. If I now have a broader vision than most, it's because I knew Edith in those days and nights of long thoughts.'