[DARISC]

Ackley sat pensively, engrossed. it would seem to the passers by, in the mortar, but it wasn't the mortar but rather the flagstone upon which he had his attention riveted, thinking to himself "every flagstone has a story", which thought, to this so far unpublished writer, seemed ominously portentious, as indeed it turned out to be when Ackley, suddenly hearing a mele and fray behind him, turned on his camel stool just in time to see a man with an aquiline nose, not unlike that of an eagle, fall and fracture his elbow on a flagstone while three other men engaged in a mele and fray which quickly escalated into a fracas, watched not only by him but also by a woman of petite blondeness and languid sexuality sitting beningnly on her petite behind, and his fingers twitchingly flittered the pen in his hand like a wren flittering at a splashing fountain and, watching this romantic scene unfold declared to himself with a sly grin "I'm going to write a worst-seller!"