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While he toiled away in the vineyard of his considerable intellectual acue for a quick trip to town My purpose was simple: to pick up some raspberry scones from the baker’s, for I kneould ask for one when he awoke on the morrow and would not be able, for the life of him, to understand why the sconeless condition persisted despite e of the deficiency

I did not notice it at first inin less than an hour) I had changed and was reaching for lance down and see it hanging on the bedpost: It was a brand-new hat, noticeably larger than the tattered,hand What was this? I picked it up, turned it over, and saw eolden thread, my initials: WJH

For a moment I remained there, frozen to the spot,as if I’d raced up a steep hill, holding in one hand my little hat, which still s since quenched, and in the other the new one that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, but of course did come from somewhere-from someone

Bareheaded, a hat-one old, one new-in either hand, I trooped back downstairs Fro the carpet, and I dashed into the rooate I had assumed Warthrop was still in his study

The doctor was sitting on the floor before the hearth, stoking the fire Beside him sat his father’s old trunk If he noticed n of it, as he threw open the lid and, one by one, began tossing the contents into the crackling conflagration The flames leaped and spat with each addition (the sent) I came to his side and sat down He barely took notice

The heat intensified upon our faces He tossed in the old letters, one by one If he noticed one had been opened (I am quite lonely at tin In fact, his face betrayed no enation He ed in a mundane chore rather than the destruction of the sole re evidence of his father’s existence

"What have you got there, Will Henry?" he inquired without taking his eyes fro pyre

I looked down at the two hats lying side by side in my lap I raised my head and studied his face, turned away froular profile shadoarred with light, the obscured visible, the hidden revealed His father had na who quested after a beast that could not be caught, an act of thoughtless cruelty, perhaps; at the least a fateful portent, the passing on of a hereditary malady, the familial curse

"My hat, sir," I answered

"Which one, Will Henry? That is the question"

The fire popped and crackled, snapped and growled That is it, thought I A fire destroys, but it also purifies

I tossed ave htest of nods, and in silence atched the fire consume it

"Who knows, Will Henry," he said after it had been reduced, like the effluvia of his father’s life, to ashes "Perhaps this burden you bear will prove a blessing"

"A blessing, sir?"

"My colleague nicknaion’"

"Does that row up?"

He lifted ift to me, from my lap and dropped it upon my head "Or that you will live forever-to carry on s!"

The hed

EPILOGUE May 2008

One hundred and twenty years after the conclusion of the "Anthropophagi Affair," I called the director of facilities to tell hi the first three volumes of William Henry’s remarkable journal

"And?" he asked

"And it’s definitely fiction"

"Well, of course it is" He sounded annoyed "You didn’t find anything thatsubstantial"

"His hometown…?"

"He calls it ‘New Jerusaleland"

"He changed the name He has to be from somewhere"

"Well," I said, "he mentions tns, Dedham and Swampscott Those are actual places in Massachusetts"

"What about family? Brothers, sisters, cousins… anyone?"