Epilogue

That's really quite all of the story of that race and those fateful days when I was a boy of ten.               My grandfather died in his bed at home upstairs in the bedroom where his children had been born and his wife had passed away not long after that morning when Dickens came home.               Dickens lived only a few months longer, then surrendered to the terrible trials, depletions, and wounds suffered on that gallant flight. He died at home.               It's dark now, the day is done. There is a different quality to the dark that comes after the setting of the sun and that which precedes the rising of it. Perhaps there are sounds and smells left over from the day that alter it. Perhaps a different texture to the winds.               Whatever the case, one is sensed as a beginning and the other as an ending.