"We'll start them on making snowshoes tomorrow," Barry said decisively. He stood up. "I'll need your help. I've never seen a pair of snowshoes. I don't know how to begin." He opened the door and before Mark left he asked, "How did you learn to make them?"

"I saw them in a book."

"What book?"

"Just a book," Mark said. "It's gone now."

In the old house, Barry understood. What other books were in the old house? He knew he had to find out. That night when he met with his brothers they talked long and soberly about the conclusions he had drawn.

"We'll have to teach them everything they might ever need," Barry said, and felt a new weariness settle over him.

"The hardest thing we'll have to do," Bruce said thoughtfully after a moment, "will be to convince others that this is so. We'll have to test it, make certain we are right, then prove it. This will put a terrible burden on the teachers, on the older brothers and sisters."

They didn't question his conclusions. Each of them, given his direct observations, would have come up with the same conclusions.

"I think we can devise a few simple tests," Barry said. "I made some sketches this afternoon." He showed them: a stick figure of a man running, climbing stairs, sitting down; a sun symbol, a circle with rays extending from it; a tree symbol, a cone with a stick in the base; a house made of four lines, two parallel, an angle for the roof; a disc moon; a bowl with steam rising from it in wavy lines…

"We could have them finish a story," Bruce said. "Keep it as simple as the drawings. A three-or four-line story without an ending, which they must supply."

Barry nodded. They knew what he was after. If the children lacked the imagination to abstract, to fantasize, to generalize, they had to know it now and try to compensate. Within a week their fears were realized. The children under nine or ten could not identify the line drawings, could not complete a simple story, could not generalize a particular situation to a new situation.

"So we teach them everything they'll need to know to survive," Barry said harshly. "And be grateful they seem able to learn whatever we teach."

They would need different lesson material, he knew. Material from the old books in the farmhouse, lessons in survival, in how to build simple lean-tos, how to make fires, how to substitute what was at hand for what was missing…

Barry and his brothers went to the old farmhouse with crowbars and hammers, ripped off the boarding at the front entrance, and went inside. While the others examined the yellowed, crumbly books in the library, Barry climbed the stairs to Molly's old rooms. Inside, he stopped and took a deep breath.