The mill had been destroyed, and only the foundation and rusting machinery indicated that it had once stood there, the mechanical queen ant of the community, giving all the will to live, the energy, the means to sustain life.

The end would have come quickly without the mill, without the power. He didn't go any closer to it. He bowed his head and stumbled down toward the river, not wanting to see anything else.

He traveled homeward more slowly than he had come, stopping often to look at the trees, the brilliant green carpet of mosses, and now and again he watched a glittering locust beat heavily through the sunlight, its iridescent wings appearing in flashes of color, then disappearing when it changed direction and didn't catch the light exactly right. The locusts had come back; there were wasps again, and worms in the ground. He stopped at a mammoth white oak that overlooked a valley and thought about the changes the tree had witnessed silently. The leaves rustled over him, and he put his cheek against the tree for a moment, then went on.

Sometimes the loneliness had been almost too much, he thought, and always at those times he had found comfort in the woods, where he sought nothing human. He wondered if the others were still lonely; no one spoke of it any longer. He smiled as he thought of how the women had wept and screamed and straggled behind him, only to run to catch up once more.

At the top of the hill overlooking his valley he paused, then leaned against a silver maple to watch the activities below. Men and women worked in the fields—weeding the sugar cane, hoeing corn, picking beans. Others had torn down one wall of the bathhouse and were busy expanding the facilities; more of the fired-clay tiles were being put in, fitted closely around the great fireplace in order to have a constant supply of hot water. Some of the older children were doing something to the water wheel—he couldn't tell what.

A dozen or more children were picking blackberries along the edges of the fields. They wore long-sleeved shirts and long pants, so they wouldn't become too scratched. They finished, put down their baskets, and began to pull off the confining clothes. Then, naked, nut-brown, laughing, they started toward the settlement. No two of them were alike.