He got out, turned on his digital camera, and glanced up at the hills.

Sunlight had just struck the highest branches. Over the next half hour, as the sun rose and the light descended, the golds and reds glimmering in the treetops would flow down until the whole valley burned with color. Then the tour buses would arrive.

For a man who imagined ice and valued solitude, there was no time to waste. So the professor followed the dog toward the sign: QUEECHEE GORGE FOOTPATH.

The ice had done mighty work here, opening a crevasse a mile long, a hundred and seventy feet deep, sixty feet wide. And year by year the Outaqueechee River continued the work, smoothing out little pools and wearing the rock imperceptibly away.

Whenever he descended the gorge, the professor felt as if he were slicing down into time itself. But he taught American history, so slicing into time was his business.

He had written a book, The Magnificent Dreamers, about the Constitutional Convention of 1787. It had made him an expert, which got him onto television whenever people argued about the Constitution. And as autumn spilled across New England, people were arguing about the Constitution more and more.

Stuart Conrad looked good on television. He had a strong jaw and a professorial brow. And he knew how to handle himself in front of the cameras. Hardball, The O’Reilly Factor, Rapid Fire … he’d done them all. He wouldn’t let Chris Matthews interrupt him. He got the last word with Sean Hannity. And when Bill O’Reilly called him a pinhead, he called O’Reilly a pinhead right back, all in the best tradition of rational, cable-televised political discourse.

Thanks to television, his book was appearing on college reading lists across the country. Better yet, he was mentoring a young woman who had a scholar’s brains and a showgirl’s legs, while he power-tripped on weekends in the bed of a Massachusetts congresswoman. And best of all, he was close to finding the document that some would call the Holy Grail of American history.

But he did not think long about any of that. This was his time for exercise and meditation. He would think later. So he followed his dog into the gorge.

The river, held back by an upstream dam, was a bare trickle near the place where the path reached the bottom.

The dog got there first and ran straight to his favorite pool for a drink. His claws scratched on the rocks.

Time for a clipping, thought the professor.

The dog lapped at the puddle, looked up, and the hackles rose on his back.

The professor followed the dog’s gaze up the side of the gorge. The walls were steep, but there were ledges, bushes, trees clinging tenaciously, as if suspended in space.

The dog must have seen something up there, a rabbit or a squirrel. But whatever it was, he lost interest and went back to lapping.

The rest took only an instant.

Something falling … the dog’s head snapping up again … the professor turning … four boulders, each the size of a jagged-edged basketball, bouncing and tumbling…

The first one missed the professor and shattered on the rocks.

The second one struck him in the face, severed the bridge of his nose, drove into his brain, and killed him instantly.

WEEK LATER, a young woman with a scholar’s brains and a showgirl’s legs appeared at the office of Fallon Antiquaria in Boston.

Peter was on the phone, negotiating the purchase of a private library from an estate in Dover. The prize of the collection was a first edition of Leaves of Grass, inscribed, “To my friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman.” Peter was saying that he would buy the whole library just to get a presentation copy of Whitman.

He hung up, leaned back in his chair, put his feet on his desk, and saw her.

“This is Jennifer Segal, boss.” Bernice was leading her into his office. “She doesn’t have an appointment, but … she’s from Dartmouth College.”

The girl looked to be in her late twenties. She was wearing a tweed jacket and a black turtleneck which, along with her black hair, made her skin seem milk-white. To this she added rimless glasses and an expression that young women often affected to discourage even casual conversation, never mind advances.

Still, she had the kind of beauty that could make a man in his late forties feel wistful, or at least inspire him to suck in his stomach when he stood to shake her hand. Not that Peter had much stomach. He was in better shape than men ten years younger. And he looked ten years younger, too, which he attributed to a daily workout, a job he enjoyed, and a commute of a few blocks.

The girl, however, seemed unimpressed with Fallon’s appearance. She expressed no interest in small talk, coffee, or anything else but business.

She produced a copy of Antiquaria, opened it to a page she had bookmarked, and asked, “Is this still for sale?”

Peter looked at the page: “A letter from Henry Knox to Rufus King RE: William Pike of Pelham, Massachusetts.”

The catalogue offered dozens of letters.