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contemplated it for many months. In the weeks before she left, she would not be defrayed by the vigorous and ridiculing protests of her off-spring, the grave cautions of her disbelieving friends, the tender memory of her husband, or even her own recurring flickers of fear. "Then Pray God, be practical . . . at least let us go with you," her children had finally pleaded. "I have, just now," she told them emphatically, "no wish to be practical. And, No, I shall go alone. "Please try and take hold of things, would you please, when I am gone." She met her professional hunter in Windhoek. A ruggedly good-looking, young man, bronze and stout, who spoke most beautifully and eventuated quite efficient she found, at what he was about. For two wondrous weeks, she buried every inhibition she had ever sheltered, cherishing more than she had imagined the harsh beauty and relentless intrigue of the African bush. With her youthful hunter and his guns, she shot kudu, warthog, oryx, and impala. While the entire, native camp staff grew more enamored of her day- by-day, guarded and watched over her as if their mission was Divine. By day she hunted, and in the small hours of each evening, lying sleepless with excitement in her tent, mid the marvelously completing sounds of the Namibian night . . . wished him there . . . by her side. Thought that . . . this is how it would have been. And on the last night before she was to leave, the young man who was her protector – who now had become more than a friend – amid their farewell celebration . . . announced casually to her that he had come upon the good fortune of a spare leopard permit. Might she be so bold as to give it a go? "I have heard that it can be quite dangerous," she said. And he had shrugged. So she had stayed two more weeks, and had taken on the eleventh day a huge, perfectly-beautiful, old tom – with all the lovely spots – at dusk, after a stifled and cramping, four hour wait on her wasted old butt in the blind. And basking in the pride of an old woman's triumph, she imagined him again there beside her, had never felt so close to him in her life. Even so long ago . . . when they were brightly young and newly devoted. With him, she was free, as for all the years of her life, a part of her had hungered to be. Maddie Addison did not go home again. Or, maybe, in the scheme of life that is forever shrouded from us in fate and mystery, she did. She died in-flight on return to the States, at a place that could only be marked by a geometric waypoint over the Atlantic. Those in attendance to her final moments would attest that, by all appearances, her demise was momentary and peaceful. Some would even say, afterward, that it was serene. It seemed merely that her heart had stopped, as if it had simply found the end of its journey, and chose no more, to go on. SPOR TIN G CL ASSICS 30