the slowly moving streams of students, the expanse of cool green grass, the solid impressiveness of nearby buildings. In the distance I could see a section of the practice football field and I thought of Mike Boyle, driving his huge shoulder into a tackling dummy, sweating and grunting, thick thighs driving powerfully. A monstrous youth, all right. But an unearthly monster? Hardly.

I heard the restless movement in the room behind me and I wrenched my thoughts back to the lecture.

"Why is Beowulf called an epic?" I asked rhetorically, turning. "Because of its scope. Because of the greatness of its hero. Because it expresses the whole struggle and aspiration and point of view of its people. Its action is on a grand scale. Its emotions are deep and powerful. This is not the twentieth century story of a housewife who has a petty little affair with a mediocre man she meets in the super market. This is big. This is important. It has to do with the vital issues of life. It has greatness. Victory is a triumph over a formidable enemy of the people. Defeat is death, and even in the manner of dying there is majesty and heroism." I paused, letting my eyes rove over the room, using the teacher's trick of focusing on the last row and thus seeming to be looking at all of the students in between. Their faces were all turned toward me in a semblance of respectful attention. A boy in the third row was sleeping with his eyes half open. "And the manner of the writing is in keeping with the heroic action," I went on, letting my gaze move forward to the front row, to the shock of flaming red hair and a pair of carelessly crossed legs sleekly clad in spun plastisheen. "It is powerful, strongly rhythmic, eloquent."

I smiled. Laurie Hendricks seemed to sigh, and the slight movement brought my attention to her breasts, softly outlined under a lemon-colored sweater.

"Of course it loses much in translation," I added. There was a respectful titter of amusement from the class. The old prof, I thought, with his academic jokes. Even at twenty-seven, in my fourth year of teaching, I had fallen into the habit of repeating the same jokes each semester. Laurie Hendricks smiled warmly at me and I found myself reacting to the moist red curve of her lips, liking the fact that she had been amused.

During the long, relatively sleepless night, my faith in the validity of my mind's impressions had wavered badly. I had ranged from an angry conviction that everything I had heard was real and true, through all the stages of argument and doubt, down to a 

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