M Street was, for Chris, completely unrecognizable. It was merely a broad unpaved road in what seemed, at best, a country town. Groves of old trees, pasture lands and orchards of large size surrounded the few houses. It was hard for Chris to realize that this was the core of the capital of the vast and teeming country into which he had been born.
With difficulty, for the streets all had different names if they existed at all, Chris looked for his own street. Going back along what he had known as M Street, not even the Pep Boys' or Iron Horse Grill was to be seen. Instead of two wide stone bridges, now there was only a rickety one crossing Rock Creek Park.
The boys walked to the bank above the park and looked down. The broad asphalt traffic lanes were gone, and so was the tidiness of the park lawns. Below him, Chris saw the tangled thick forests that had always stood there. The creek itself, in the quiet of this earlier time, could be plainly heard running over its stones.
Chris turned and led Amos to where he half expected to see his mother's house. But where his house would stand in some future year, nothing was to be seen but a dense grove of trees growing along the top of a little rise of ground. Someone had once built a fire at the corner, where his front door would one day be. Chris kicked idly at the ashes and picked up a metal button blackened by the fire.
"What you-all looking for?" patient Amos asked.
"Just something I hoped I'd find," Chris answered, filled with a sense of desolation.
Then he made himself remember that his house had yet to be built, and aware of the hollowness of his stomach, he said to Amos: "Must be lunch time. Let's go down to the creek to eat."
They scrambled down the bank near where, in his time, there was a children's playground, and weaving in and out of the thick wood, found the creek, clear and fresh. Here they ate their lunch, and then, running and leaping, followed the turns of the stream until they neared the marshes and the river.