A fly was crawling along Saint Leibowitz’ nose. The eyes of the saint seemed to be looking crosseyed at the fly, urging the abbot to brush it away. The abbot had grown fond of the twenty-sixth century wood carving; its face wore a curious smile of a sort that made it rather unusual as a sacramental image. The smile was turned down at one corner; the eyebrows were pulled low in a faintly dubious frown, although there were laugh-wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. Because of the hangman’s rope over one shoulder, the saint’s expression often seemed puzzling. Possibly it resulted from slight irregularities in the grain of the wood, such irregularities dictating to the carver’s hand as that hand sought to bring out finer details than were possible with such wood. Dom Paulo was not certain whether the image had been growth-sculptured as a living tree before carving or not; sometimes the patient master-carvers of that period had begun with an oak or cedar sapling, and-by spending tedious years at pruning, barking, twisting, and tying living branches into desired positions-had tormented the growing wood into a striking dryad shape, arms folded or raised aloft, before cutting the mature tree for curing and carving. The resulting statue was unusually resistant to splitting or breaking, since most of the lines of the work followed the natural grain.