* * *

There were movements. A small flame illuminated Captain Waters' features
as he lit his pipe. The flame went out. Then, only the occasional glow
of the pipe, briefly illuminating the police Captain's face.

_Crrroak!_ The frog greeted this newest arrival in his domain.

Fred could not think. He was too conscious of the man sitting near him.
He fought down the impulse to jump up and run away into the darkness. He
fought the desire to scream at the man to leave him alone.

Perhaps the police captain sensed this, or perhaps he could see Fred's
expression when the coal in his pipe glowed brightest. "Tell you what,"
he said suddenly, "You maybe would feel better alone. I'll wait in the
car. When you get ready you can come home. No more doctors. Mom gave me
a good talking to. She wants you to come back."

Waters got up and walked away into the night. Minutes later there was
the sound of a car door slamming shut. Fred was alone again.

Alone. It was a feeling, almost an emotion. Intellectually he knew that
nearby was a frog. A block away across the meadow was the police captain
sitting in his car.

Abruptly, without warning, a flash of insight spread through his entire
mind. He knew suddenly what belief was. He knew it instinctively and
without question.

And knowing it, he knew that his foundations of unbelief were a semantic
illusion that had been built up within him. The panorama of his mind,
his entire life, stood clearly before him.

The cute little tags of probability were superficial. They had a
pragmatic value in keeping the mind open, but their function was to
guide the judgment in tagging thoughts with belief or disbelief.

He retreated into his aloneness until there was nothing but himself. He
marveled at the unfoldment of this new understanding. He could see
things in this new light of understanding.

But then.... A question loomed. If that were so, why hadn't he vanished
like the others? Belief was an automatic process. Why hadn't it
permeated to the basic matrix of his mind as it had with the others?

Was he, then, still on the wrong track?

But there _was_ no other!

He saw the trap he had set for himself. He had believed with all his
being that belief was the key he was searching for!

He had been on the wrong track. His beautiful theory of belief that
spread downward into the subconscious, then down lower and lower into
the basic matrix that held a person in this realit