On the following day, Sido and Tyrone would leave for Nova Scotia. The gang of Manuscript thieves were in FBI custody, and in a gesture inspired by a sunny, relatively warm December day -- as well as by the arrival of Griff and Caydance for a celebratory lunch -- snow had been cleared from outdoor picnic tables. Lunch would be served inside, but before lunch there was French Champagne provided by Nicolas ("Almost as good as what the FBI is probably drinking now", he proclaimed). Also on the tables -- now adorned with blue and white table cloths -- was an assortment of cheeses, baguettes warm from the oven, apple slices, and roast pecans. Homemade bratwursts were toasting on an outdoor grill.

Griff and Caydance told how Montreal restaurant dinners melted the freeze between his Grandmother and his Mother. Sido revealed that according to her Grandmother, her Grandfather had not lost Jacques Marie St Pierre Frazier's diary, but had sold it to a collector to pay for a clarinet for her then teenage Father. "All we have to do now," she said, "is to figure out to whom he sold it and what they did with it."

arrow The subject of the moose in the Music Box Book of Hours arose, and Pete told the story of how a moose appeared at the back door on the first night that he and Merry spent at the Lodge. They were lifting champagne-filled glasses in a toast to the Northeast Kingdom, and did not observe that a bear had appeared in the woods.