To begin at the beginning: It is a spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched couters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles can see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or as blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now...You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing. Only your eyes are unclosed, to see the black and folded town fast and slow, asleep.

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