Chapter 4

“Stuff!” said Mr. Havelot. “People can live in a temperature of thirty-two degrees above zero all winter. Out in Minnesota they think that's hot. And you gave him victuals and drink through your diploma case! Well, miss, I told you that if you tried to roast chestnuts in that diploma case the bottom would come out.”

“But you see, father,” said Agnes, earnestly, “the reason I did that was because when I roasted them in anything shallow they popped into the fire, but they could not jump out of the diploma case.”

“Well, something else seems to have jumped out of it,” said the old gentleman, “and something with which I am not satisfied. I have been looking over these books, sir, and have read the articles on ice, glaciers and caves, and I find no record of anything in the whole history of the world which in the least resembles the cock-and-bull story I am told about the butt-end of a glacier which tumbled into a cave in your ground, and has been lying there through all the geological ages, and the eras of formation, and periods of animate existence down to the days of Noah, and Moses, and Methuselah, and Rameses II, and Alexander the Great, and Martin Luther, and John Wesley, to this day, for you to dig out and sell to the Williamstown Ice Co.”

“But that's what happened, sir,” said I.

“And besides, father,” added Agnes, “the gold and silver that people take out of mines may have been in the ground as long as that ice has been.”

“Bosh!” said Mr. Havelot. “The cases are not at all similar. It is simply impossible that a piece of a glacier should have fallen into a cave and been preserved in that way. The temperature of caves is always above the freezing-point, and that ice would have melted a million years before you were born.”

“But, father,” said Agnes, “the temperature of caves filled with ice must be very much lower than that of common caves.”

“And apart from that,” I added, “the ice is still there, sir.”

“That doesn't make the slightest difference,” he replied. “It's against all reason and commonsense that such a thing could have happened. Even if there ever was a glacier in this part of the country and if the lower portion of it did stick out over an immense hole in the ground, that protruding end would never have broken off and tumbled in. Glaciers are too thick and massive for that.”

“But the glacier is there, sir,” said I, “in spite of your own reasoning.”

“And then again,” continued the old gentleman, “if there had been a cave and a projecting spur the ice would have gradually melted and dripped into the cave, and we would have had a lake and not an ice-mine. It is an absurdity.”

“But it's there, notwithstanding,” said I.

“And you can not subvert facts, you know, father,” added Agnes.

“Confound facts!” he cried. “I base my arguments on sober, cool-headed reason; and there's nothing that can withstand reason. The thing's impossible and, therefore, it has never happened. I went over to your place, sir, when I heard of the accident, for the misfortunes of my neighbors interest me, no matter what may be my opinion of them, and when I found that you had been extricated from your ridiculous predicament, I went through your house, and I was pleased to find it in as good or better condition than I had known it in the days of your respected father. I was glad to see the improvement in your circumstances; but when I am told, sir, that your apparent prosperity rests upon such an absurdity as a glacier in a gravel hill, I can but smile with contempt, sir.”

I was getting a little tired of this. “But the glacier is there, sir,” I said, “and I am taking out ice every day, and have reason to believe that I can continue to take it out for the rest of my life. With such facts as these before me, I am bound to say, sir, that I don't care in the least about reason.”

“And I am here, father,” said Agnes, coming close to me, “and here I want to continue for the rest of my days.”

The old gentleman looked at her. “And, I suppose,” he said, “that you, too, don't in the least care about reason?”

“Not a bit,” said Agnes.

“Well,” said Mr. Havelot, rising, “I have done all I can to make you two listen to reason, and I can do no more. I despair of making sensible human beings of you, and so you might as well go on acting like a couple of ninny-hammers.”

“Do ninny-hammers marry and settle on the property adjoining yours, sir?” I asked.

“Yes, I suppose they do,” he said. “And when the aboriginal ice-house, or whatever the ridiculous thing is that they have discovered, gives out, I suppose that they can come to a reasonable man and ask him for a little money to buy bread and butter.”

Two years have passed, and Agnes and the glacier are still mine; great blocks of ice now flow in almost a continuous stream from the mine to the railroad station, and in a smaller but quite as continuous stream an income flows in upon Agnes and me; and from one of the experimental excavations made by Tom Burton on the bluff comes a stream of ice-cold water running in a sparkling brook a-down my dell. On fine mornings before I am up, I am credibly informed that Aaron Boyce may generally be found, in season and out of season, endeavoring to catch the trout with which I am trying to stock that ice-cold stream. The diploma case, which I caused to be carefully removed from the ice-barrier which had imprisoned me, now hangs in my study and holds our marriage certificate.

Near the line-fence which separates his property from mine, Mr. Havelot has sunk a wide shaft. “If the glacier spur under your land was a quarter of a mile wide,” he says to me, “it was probably at least a half a mile long; and if that were the case, the upper end of it extends into my place, and I may be able to strike it.” He has a good deal of money, this worthy Mr. Havelot, but he would be very glad to increase his riches, whether they are based upon sound reason or ridiculous facts. As for Agnes and myself, no facts or any reason could make us happier than our ardent love and our frigid fortune.

End of Project Gutenberg's My Terminal Moraine, by Frank E. Stockton