Sanctuary

BY

WILLIAM FAULKNER

Other SIGNET Books by William Faulkner

Intruder in the Dust (#131848-50~)

Knight's Gambit(#S1315-35~)

Pylon (#S1485-35~)

Sartoris (#131614-50~)

Soldiers' Pay(#I)1629-50~)

The Unvanquished(#CD9-500)

The Wild Palms and The Old Man

(#D1643-500) The Long (Hot) Summer

(Book III of "The Hamlet") (#S1501-350)

The Sound and the Fury (#D1628-500)

To OUR READERS: We welcome your request for our free catalog Of SIGNET and

MENTOR Books. If your dealer does not have the books you want, you may order

them by mail enclosing the list price plus 50 a copy to cover mailing. The

New American Library of World Literature, Inc., P.O. Box 2310, Grand Central

Station, New York 17, N. Y.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

Sanctuary

and

Requiem for a Nun

A SIGNET BOOK

Published by THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

CoPYRIGHT, 1931, BY WILLIAM FAULKNER

COPYRIGHT, 1950, 1951, BY WILLIAM FAULKNER

Published as a SIGNET BOOK By Arrangement with Random House, Inc.

FIRST JOINT PRINTING, MARCH, 1954

SECOND PRINTING, DECEMBER, 1957

THIRD PRINTING, AUGUST, 1958

FOURTH PRINTING, JANUARY, 1961

Sanctuary, as a separate SIGNET book, has had thirteen printings.

SIGNET BOOKS are published by

The New American Library of World Literature, Inc.

501 Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

SANCTUARY

FROM BEYOND THE SCREEN OF BUSHES WHICH SURROUNDED the spring, Popeye watched

the man drinking. A faint path led from the road to the spring. Popeye

watched the mana tall, thin man, hatless, in worn gray flannel trousers and

carrying a tweed coat over his arm--emerge from the path and kneel to drink

from the spring.

The spring welled up at the root of a beech tree and flowed away upon a

bottom of whorled and waved sand. It was surrounded by a thick growth of

cane and brier, of cypress and gum in which broken sunlight lay sourceless.

Somewhere, hidden and secret yet nearby, a bird sang three notes and

ceased.

In the spring the drinking man leaned his face to the broken and myriad

reflection of his own drinking. When he rose up he saw among them the

scattered reflection of Popeye's straw hat, though he had heard no sound.

He saw, facing him across the spring, a man of under size, his hands in his

coat pockets, a cigarette slanted from his chin. His suit was black, with

a tight, high-waisted coat. His trousers were rolled once and caked with

mud above mud-caked shoes. His face had a queer, bloodless color, as though

seen by electric light; against the sunny silence, in his slanted straw hat

and his slightly akimbo arms, he had that vicious depthless quality of

stamped tin.

Behind him the bird sang again, three bars in monotonous repetition: a

sound meaningless and profound out of a suspirant and peaceful following

silence which seemed to isolate the spot, and out of which a moment later

tame the sound of an automobile passing along a road and dying away.

The drinking man knelt beside the spring. "You've got a pistol in that

pocket, I suppose," he said.

Across the spring Popeye appeared to contemplate him with two knobs of soft

black rubber. "I'm asking you," Popeye said. "What's that in your pocket?"

The other man's coat wasstill across his arm. He lifted 5

6 WILLIAM FAULKNER

his other hand toward the coat, out of one pocket of which protruded a

crushed felt hat, from the other a book. "Which pocket?" he said.

"Dont show me," Popeye said. "Tell me."

The other man stopped his hand. "It's a book."

"What book?" Popeye said.

"Just a book. The kind that people read. Some people do."

"Do you read books?" Popeye said.

The other man's hand was frozen above the coat. Across the spring they

looked at one another. The cigarette wreathed its faint plume across

Popeye's face, one side of his face squinted against the smoke like a

mask carved into two simultaneous expressions.

From his hip pocket Popeye took a soiled handkerchief and spread it upon

his heels. Then he squatted, facing the man across the spring. That was

about four o'clock on an afternoon in May. They squatted so, facing one

another across the spring, for two hours. Now and then the bird sang back

in the swamp, as though it were worked by a clock; twice more invisible

automobiles passed along the highroad and died away. Again the bird sang.

"And of course you dont know the name of it," the man across the spring

said. "I dont suppose you'd know a bird at all, without it was singing

in a cage in a hotel lounge, or cost four dollars on a plate." Popeye

said nothing. He squatted in his tight black suit, his right-hand coat

pocket sagging compactly against his flank, twisting and pinching

cigarettes in his little, doll-like hands, spitting into the spring. His

skin had a dead, dark pallor. His nose was faintly acquiline, and he had

no chin at all. His face just went away, like the face of a wax doll set

too near a hot fire and forgotten. Across his vest ran a platinum chain

like a spider web. "Look here," the other man said. "My name is Horace

Benbow. I'm a lawyer in Kinston. I used to live in Jefferson yonder; I'm