n the city, and we can't bear the thought of wearing clothes of
blue canvas and doing drudgery. We are going to live a simple life here,
like the people of old."

The shepherd was a bearded man with a thoughtful face. He glanced at
Elizabeth's fragile beauty.

"_They_ had simple minds," he said.

"So have we," said Denton.

The shepherd smiled.

"If you go along here," he said, "along the crest beneath the
wind-wheels, you will see a heap of mounds and ruins on your right-hand
side. That was once a town called Epsom. There are no houses there, and
the bricks have been used for a sheep pen. Go on, and another heap on
the edge of the root-land is Leatherhead; and then the hill turns away
along the border of a valley, and there are woods of beech. Keep along
the crest. You will come to quite wild places. In some parts, in spite
of all the weeding that is done, ferns and bluebells and other such
useless plants are growing still. And through it all underneath the
wind-wheels runs a straight lane paved with stones, a roadway of the
Romans two thousand years old. Go to the right of that, down into the
valley and follow it along by the banks of the river. You come presently
to a street of houses, many with the roofs still sound upon them. There
you may find shelter."

They thanked him.

"But it's a quiet place. There is no light after dark there, and I have
heard tell of robbers. It is lonely. Nothing happens there. The
phonographs of the story-tellers, the kinematograph entertainments, the
news machines--none of them are to be found there. If you are hungry
there is no food, if you are ill no doctor ..." He stopped.

"We shall try it," said Denton, moving to go on. Then a thought struck
him, and he made an agreement with the shepherd, and learnt where they
might find him, to buy and bring them anything of which they stood in
need, out of the city.

And in the evening they came to the deserted village, with its houses
that seemed so small and odd to them: they found it golden in the glory
of the sunset, and desolate and still. They went from one deserted house
to another, marvelling at their quaint simplicity, and debating which
they should choose. And at last, in a sunlit corner of a room that had
lost its outer wall, they came upon a wild flower, a little flower of
blue that the weeders of the Food Company had overlooked.

That house they decided upon; but they did not remain in it long that
night, because they w