Suzette Wenger, Intelligencer-Journal Amish students return home yesterday after their first day of classes at New Hope School in Nickel Mines, Lancaster County.

NICKEL MINES, Pa. -- The name says so much.

The New Hope Amish School opened yesterday, replacing the one-room schoolhouse that was bulldozed after a gunman executed a row of little girls exactly six months before.

The pain and grief in Lancaster County have only started to fade, but the handsome one-room, building with brick and tan vinyl siding stands as testimony that the tiny community will go forward.

It was Oct. 2 when Charles Roberts, a neighbor, burst into the West Nickel Mines School, rounded up 10 girls and shot them, killing five and leaving one comatose. He then killed himself as state troopers began closing in.

The new school is about 200 yards across rolling farmland from the site of the old one, where crops now are being planted.

Pupils in black Amish garb slowly filed in yesterday morning after arriving in horse and buggy, or on non-motorized scooters, or walking with their parents. Four of the girls who had been wounded last October were among the 20 or so students.

Two state police cruisers were parked at the top of the winding driveway off Mine Road that leads to the new schoolhouse, which sits behind a row of small, ranch-style houses. Neither the police nor two men and a woman, who also seemed to be standing guard, would say anything about the school, saying the Amish had asked them not to.

"I think they are getting reconciled. They feel this somehow was the Lord's will,'' said Ellie Groff, a non-Amish woman in her 70s who has lived her whole life in Bart Township, which includes the village of Nickel Mines.

"Things are sort of simmering down around here, finally,'' Mrs. Groff said. She lives on Furnace Road, about a mile from where the new schoolhouse stands, and she recalled watching the funeral procession last fall for three of the slain girls.

"It was such a sad, sad day,'' she said. "We watched the funeral buggies go by our house. Coffins for two of the girls were in the same long carriage."

Most of the Amish approached yesterday asked to be left alone. An Amish woman at an antiques store wouldn't talk but handed a visitor a written statement reading, "We ask that you respect our families decision of No Comment. This we ask in the interest of the continuance of our healing and our desire to live a quiet, God-fearing way of life."

Down the road, an Amish woman who identified herself only as Hannah, said the helicopters overhead last fall were the first sign from afar that something was wrong.

"It was so hard,'' she said. "You couldn't even work for days afterward. It was like going in circles.''

Before Oct. 2, no one who lives more than a few miles away had ever heard of Nickel Mines. "Not any more," she said, "everybody knows about Nickel Mines now.''

Asked how the community is getting along, she replied, "I think it's doing pretty good. I think the people are doing pretty good. But I'm sure this is a hard day,'' with the opening of the new school reminding everyone afresh about the tragedy.

The violence of that day contrasts markedly with the peaceful atmosphere of the surrounding farmland, with its large swaths of green and brown, as land is prepared for planting. White farmhouses dot the landscape, many with red barns and silos of either silver or blue.

Susan Johnson is the bank manager at Coatesville Savings Bank, one of a handful of buildings in the small center of Bart, about a mile from the new school.

"We saw a great outpouring of people from all over the world who wanted to help,'' she said. "Don't be upset that the Amish don't want to comment. That day was just a nightmare, filled with disbelief.''

Mike Hart, an official of the Bart Township Fire Company nearby, told The Associated Press that more than $4 million has been donated to the Nickel Mines Accountability Committee, which paid for the wounded girls' medical care and for the new school.

Nearby at the small Bart post office, clerk Helena Salerno said the town "seems to be heading back to normal. The Amish are such religious people. They've rebounded better than I think I could.''

Many non-Amish have been amazed at the ability of the Amish to forgive Mr. Charles for his crimes against their children.

"Don't you know the Lord's prayer? 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us?' " said Hannah. "How can Jesus forgive our sins if we can't forgive others? I don't understand how God let this happen, but I think there is a reason. We just trust in God."