MacDougall disappeared. He was gone five days, walking in the forest. He prayed and fasted the whole time. Afterwards, he said he'd had a vision -- he'd seen an angel. The angel, in the form of a white-haired old man looking like Abraham, Moses, or Jesus -- certainly someone of similar standing among angels -- had told him things would get worse before they got better again. "Endure," he'd advised. MacDougall got up the next morning and came back down his mountain.

He had ever with him in his pockets a paperback or two -- and pencils, pens, and small notebooks. He wrote notes all the time. He scribbled while eating, in the dark at a movie, at noisy coffee shops, wherever. He read The New York Times Book Review avidly and often, and was a regular customer at Lauscher’s Bookshop, just three stores up from the Horsehair Inn in downtown Tumsaw. There he made copious notes, keeping up on all the new bestsellers, books in every genre, and whatever else caught his involved and interested evolving bookman’s eye.

Now MacDougall got into his huge trouble. He was roaming hungrily in Lauscher’s Bookshop, perusing titles and jotting notes, when a plainclothes policeman approached. He shadowed MacDougall in his journey through the store, then followed him out. There he grabbed MacDougall’s elbow, and spun him around. He put handcuffs on MacDougall’s wrists. Joe Horsehair, who knew MacDougall as a friend of mine, saw this and ran up to help -- to clarify, defend, or do whatever might be called for. Joe was gruffly pushed aside. A patrol car arrived. The arresting officers gently tilted MacDougall’s head down so that he wouldn’t bump it on the top of the door frame when they shoved him into the backseat of the car.

He was charged with willfully and unlawfully depriving others of library materials -- books, photographs, engravings, paintings, drawings, maps, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, broadsides, manuscripts, documents, letters, and sound recordings -- by willful concealment, converting them to his own use -- in short, library theft. He had failed to return certain library materials within thirty days. Cyrus Rankin said he'd had "probable cause" to believe that MacDougall had committed library theft and had insisted MacDougall be arrested. Subsequent to the arrest, in accord with the law, the peace officers accepting custody of the arrested person searched the person and his or her immediate possessions for items alleged to have been taken. Our cabin was searched. All of MacDougall's drawings and paintings were confiscated. He was charged, beyond library theft, with insulting public morality.

He was driven clear to Lander, put in a jail cell, and fiercely interrogated. His arrest was overseen by the General Intelligence Division of the Department of Justice. “You’re making a mistake,” he repeatedly insisted, pulling a long, hairy arm along his wet eyes, his nostrils flaring (“We don’t think so,” came back the response”). The more MacDougall insisted he was innocent, the harsher was the inquisition rising up against him. One interrogator took MacDougall firmly by his coat lapels and shook him nearly senseless. “We know who you are,” they insisted. “I -- “ MacDougall tried to speak, but the interrogators pushed him back to his seat. The chrome and leather inquisition chair both swiveled and rolled on coasters. It wasn’t long before MacDougall got sick. Finally, they allowed him to make a single phone call, then they locked him up for the night.

"Get to your van," Roger Shepperton said, storming into the cabin. "Go!" he said, and ran alongside me a little ways, telling me the awful basics of the situation. Tzu Jan Chi was already waiting for me in the school’s parking lot. I let him in on the passenger side then climbed in on the driver's side and we rolled, speeding from the school all the way to Lander, arriving within an hour of Chi's first getting the call.

We entered the station, bowed to the officers, and were ushered to MacDougall’s cell. Chi explained a special Two-Top Mountain School fund would pay MacDougall’s bail. He explained Mahatma Gandhi's rules for Civil Resistance (harbour no anger; suffer the opponent's anger; put up with assaults and never retaliate; never insult your opponent; do not swear or curse; submit to arrest; do not resist the attachment of your property when sought to be confiscated by authorities). "But --" MacDougall tried repeatedly to speak to Chi of the injustice done him. Each time MacDougall did this, or to express his resentment, Chi held his hands in a way that gently warned MacDougall the words would be fruitless -- lost on these people. MacDougall's handcuffs were removed. We were quietly escorted out of the station. No words passed between the two.

We did not return at once to the school but rather drove to the Bluejay Diner, just opposite Lauscher’s Bookshop and the Horsehair Inn in downtown Tumsaw. We ordered vegetarian burgers, coleslaw, and beers. Chi took off his big cocoa brown coat with fleecing of sheepswool, yellow-white, and set it down next to him. He smiled. His bad teeth matched the color of the fleece. His eyes looked like chestnuts in egg whites. MacDougall knew what I knew about the man -- that he had studied watercolor in Shang-hai in the 1940s and had come under the influence of American Impressionism -- John Singer Sargeant and Winslow Homer. Arriving in America after floating in the South China Sea must have been hard on him, but even harder, conceivably, was his arriving at his personal idiom, his particular style, his own way of painting. He’d endured much, and had shown much courage.

I was crying. I could see the pain MacDougall felt. It was etched deeply in his face. But I could also see that the time we spent talking with serene Tzu Jan Chi in the diner was going to make a big difference in the outcome, what with everybody, especially MacDougall, now having to deal with what was going to happen next. Who could have imagined MacDougall going to prison?