A man of fifty-four whose mother died in the thirties; he tried to kill himself, failed, and was put in an asylum for the mildly insane. He ran away, the police brought him back, the asylum would not have him and he was set free. He lives in a tent in the hills on a hundred dollars a month from a twenty-thousand-dollar trust, washing cars and doing odd jobs, and when he saves a few dollars he goes off to the desert to hunt gold - his prospecting act. Approaching a hill with not a soul in sight for miles, he heard a voice say 'I AM'. Startled, he looked round; it repeated, louder. He thought it must be a helicopter with a public-address system and looked up at an empty sky. The fourth time it said: 'Do not come up here, I AM.' Curious, he climbed, and found a four-foot rattler stretched out and staring at him - uncoiled, therefore harmless - and he ran. Neville reads it as Exodus 3 happening now: Eddie heard, as everyone will one day hear, as coming from without what is actually whispered from within. Not 'I am this' or 'I am that' - simply I AM. And had a thousand people stood beside him, he alone would have heard it.