As the old man peered into the surrounding darkness, the weight of long years pulling dry and brittle lids down over his failing eyes, he began to recognize a previously ungraspable presence which, he knew now with utter certainty, had been there all along. Each night, since his distant youth, he had sensed its outline, felt the floorboards creak under its persistent footfalls. Throughout his fleeting lifetime, direct knowledge of the presence had escaped him, but now in this, his last twilight, he understood that there had only ever been one question:

"Will it float?"