He had reorganized the school, and was back at what he felt to be his essential work of teaching the young ones to read and write and work a little arithmetic, and thus to maintain for The Tribe some hold on the basic skills of civilization. Other thoughts, and worries, occupied his mind.

It was barely time to expect their return from a transcontinental journey, and certainly not time to begin worrying over their failure to return. Their being gone so long seemed to show that they had traveled far. In the mornings the low summer clouds hung so close that the towers of the bridges sometimes reached up into them.Īs time passed, Ish stopped thinking, and dreaming, so much about the two boys. The grass on the hills lost its fresh greenness, and then seeded and turned brown. So the weeks passed, and the rains were over.

When he thought of it, he could scarcely contain himself for excitement at the thought of all the news they would bring. Actually, if they kept a car running, they should be home a great deal sooner. Twenty miles a day, at least a hundred a week-even if they had to walk a thousand miles, they should be home before fall. Even if the car should break down and they were unable to start another one, still they could walk back over the same road they had driven. Then he thought of the two boys as enjoying themselves, stimulated by new scenes, perhaps by new people. That was no guarantee that other comunities had done the same.īut in the morning light, all these bug-a-boos of the darkness lost their reality. This community of their own here on the hillside, might be stodgy and dull and uncreative, but it had at least preserved the human decencies. Outlandish religious rites might have developed-human sacrifice, cannibalism! Perhaps, like Odysseus himself, the two youngsters would encounter lotus-eaters and sirens and unspeakable Laestrygonians.

Then they would be marooned, hundreds or even thousands of miles away!īut what raised the worst shivers in Ish at such moments in the night was the thought of men! What people might the boys encounter? What strange communities-warped and perverted by curious circumstances, unrestrained by any flywheel of tradition! There might be communities with universal and death-dealing hostility to the stranger. No-more likely, the car would break down.

Earth abides book