“Can you remember when it was a mill?” Marjorie asked.

They rowed on out of sight of the mill, following the shore line.

No one who lived in it was out of sound of the big saws in the mill by the lake.

The logs had been lost from the big log booms that were towed down the lake to the mill by the steamer Magic.

The lumber schooners came into the bay and were loaded with the cut of the mill that stood stacked in the yard.

The big mill building had all its machinery that was removable taken out and hoisted on board one of the schooners by the men who had worked in the mill.

Ten years later there was nothing of the mill left except the broken white limestone of its foundations showing through the swampy second growth as Nick and Marjorie rowed along the shore.

The one-story bunk houses, the eating-house, the company store, the mill offices, and the big mill itself stood deserted in the acres of sawdust that covered the swampy meadow by the shore of the bay.

Its open hold covered with canvas and lashed tight, the sails of the schooner filled and it moved out into the open lake, carrying with it everything that had made the mill a mill and Hortons Bay, a town.