Don't despair, accentuate the positive, the British and Irish governments are urging Northern Ireland's pro-Belfast Agreement politicians as they return to work after the summer vacation.
The Assembly in committee mode resumes today, and in the offices, halls and corridors of Parliament Buildings, Stormont, "Yes" politicians wonder will David Trimble again outmanoeuvre his tormentors. Or will they finally get him?
This season of mists and mellow fruitfulness brings policing, the South Antrim by-election, the Ulster Unionist Party conference, and a body of party colleagues biding their time for an opportunity to wield the dagger. "If I were David Trimble I would be viewing the coming months with some degree of horror," said a senior UUP figure happily.
Naturally, this Ulster Unionist is in the No camp. He realises the future of the Belfast Agreement may hinge on the future of David Trimble. The First Minister will survive a couple of months longer, but by Christmas he could be following in the failed footsteps of Terence O'Neill and Brian Faulkner - and the agreement along with him, this unionist reckons.
The British and Irish governments are conscious of the hazards ahead, although it seems the British government is the only one prepared to rally to his cause. Still, it could be worse. "Look where we've come from, look at the obstacles we have overcome," says one British source.
Everything that was achieved was achieved painstakingly. Through the 1990s politics proceeded from talks about talks, to talks, to the agreement, to the establishment of the Executive, the Assembly and the North-South bodies, to at least some movement on IRA arms. Issues that at one stage or another seemed insurmountable.
The months ahead, though, are particularly tricky, all the players concede, particularly for David Trimble, and by extension for the agreement itself. The big issue for Trimble's survival is policing. He can take a little consolation from the fact that the final stage of the Police Bill is unlikely to begin its passage through Westminster until mid-October or thereabouts - after the South Antrim by-election on September 21st and his annual party conference on October 7th.
In the 2 1/2 weeks to polling day, a bitter by-election will be fought between David Burnside for the UUP and William McCrea for the DUP.
Mr Burnside, a London-based public relations consultant, says he wants a clean campaign, but when the DUP and Mr McCrea start getting down and dirty, the UUP candidate, or his representatives, may have no option but to respond in kind.
Mr Burnside is campaigning as an Ulster Unionist who will unite the Yes and No wings of the party. When he opened his campaign last week he had the two sides of the party beside him - Mr Trimble and his predecessor, Lord Molyneaux, as testimony to a pseudo-rapprochement.
Mr McCrea will aggressively claim inconsistencies in such a position. The question the DUP man will repeat like a mantra is: "Is David Burnside for the agreement, or against the agreement? He can't have it both ways."
It's difficult to predict the outcome. In the Assembly election of two years ago, pro-agreement unionists won roughly 10,800 votes against 10,400 for No unionists. With two No candidates in South Antrim - Mr McCrea and Mr Norman Boyd of the Northern Ireland Unionist Party - there will be some splitting of the anti-agreement vote, which should benefit Mr Burnside. But with Patten, prisoner releases and other unpalatable matters constantly assaulting the consciousness of unionism, there are serious questions as to the solidity of the Yes unionist camp in the constituency.
The winning of this by-election will be in the campaign itself. Personality will count. The gladhanding abilities of each man and their performance on television and radio could sway voters one way or the other.
A further timely move by the IRA to allow the inspectors to look at their arms dumps could help Burnside and Trimble, but such a gesture may not be forthcoming in the absence of a resolution of policing.
A loss of the seat would be very damaging for Mr Trimble. Victory would allow him and his supporters to claim he was the only leader capable of keeping the different strands of unionism from totally rending. Of course it will also bring Mr Burnside further into the centre of UUP affairs, a man who was partly responsible for making policing such an incendiary issue in the first place.
The anti-agreement unionist faction will accuse the British government of contortionism in withholding the hard decisions on policing until after the by-election and the UUP conference. But it is also fully aware that such are the rules of Ulster Unionism that it can ambush Mr Trimble at any time it wishes. All it needs is 60 signatories to call another Ulster Unionist Council meeting to vote on a motion to depose Mr Trimble or to decide on an alternative motion handcuffing him to a No position. The passing of either motion could make Mr Trimble's position untenable.
If that happens he could resign or, like Brian Faulkner before him, try to keep sufficient of the pro-agreement element of his Assembly team together to maintain the necessary degree of cross-community consensus in the chamber.
But if the Ulster Unionist Council goes against Mr Trimble, as it did against Mr Faulkner in 1974, expect a chain reaction thereafter, with more of his Assembly party defecting to the No brigade.
So, where's the positive in all this? Hard to find at the moment. The British government will do all it can to save the First Minister, and that probably means some dilution of Patten. And that means incurring the wrath of the Dublin Government, the SDLP and Sinn Fein.
Peter Mandelson says the name RUC will not be in the working title but that it will be in "the title deeds" of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. "There will be no dual name, but the RUC is not being disbanded," is his line. Contentious issues such as the powers of the Policing Board and the role of the oversight commissioner could probably be resolved between now and the signing of the Police Bill sometime in the autumn. But it is the emotive matters such as the RUC name, the flying of the union flag at police stations, and the new badge, that at a visceral level is gnawing at unionism, including moderate unionism.
Patten wanted a neutral force, shorn of its British symbolism, as does the Irish Government, the SDLP and Sinn Fein. Mr Mandelson is desperate to satisfy some of unionism's demands while not infuriating nationalism.
Dublin, the SDLP and Sinn Fein are playing it very tight on this one. Patten is the bottom line. "It's a touchstone issue," to use Gerry Adams's regular phrase. The SDLP and Sinn Fein are engaged in a power struggle for nationalist votes and neither side appears willing to offer any concessions on policing.
The British government has conveyed the impression that while Sinn Fein is a lost cause, the SDLP might accept some fine-tuning of Patten to facilitate unionism and safeguard the agreement. But for the past three decades, police reform has been number one on Seamus Mallon's agenda. He won't roll over too easily for Mr Mandelson.
Policing has reawakened the ghost of the Council of Ireland, one of the main planks on which loyalists and unionists were able to destroy the Sunningdale powersharing government of 1974.
Through the North-South Ministerial Council, there is now an effective Council of Ireland. It took a generation, but that issue has been overcome, but without some ingenious intervention by Mr Mandelson, policing now could be the issue that fatally divides the pro-agreement unionist bloc.
Mr Mandelson has few options. Between now and mid-October he will search for a fudge to assist Mr Trimble and hope that all, or at least two-thirds of the nationalist triumvirate, the Government and the SDLP, will grudgingly co-operate. Big stakes and the danger here is that this could lead to a game of brinkmanship where the opposing sides are prepared to drop over the brink.