s. There he explained
everything and showed me how, by digging away a portion of the face of
the bluff, he had found that this vast fragment of the glacier,
which had been so miraculously preserved, ended in an irregularly
perpendicular wall, which extended downward he knew not how far, and the
edge of it on its upper side had been touched by my workmen in digging
their pit. "It was the gradual melting of the upper end of this
glacier," said Tom, "probably more elevated than the lower end, that
made your dell. I wondered why the depression did not extend further up
toward the spot where the foot of the glacier was supposed to have been.
This end of the fragment, being sunk in deeper and afterward covered up
more completely, probably never melted at all."

"It is amazing--astounding," said I; "but what of it, now that we have
found it?"

"What of it?" cried Tom, and his whole form trembled as he spoke. "You
have here a source of wealth, of opulence which shall endure for the
rest of your days. Here at your very door, where it can be taken out and
transported with the least possible trouble, is ice enough to supply the
town, the county, yes, I might say, the State, for hundreds of years.
No, sir, I can not go in to supper. I can not eat. I leave to you the
business and practical part of this affair. I go to report upon its
scientific features."

"Agnes," exclaimed, as I walked to the house with my hands clasped and
my eyes raised to the sky, "the glacial period has given thee to me!"

This did not immediately follow, although I went that very night to
Mr. Havelot and declared to him that I was now rich enough to marry his
daughter. He laughed at me in a manner which was very annoying, and made
certain remarks which indicated that he thought it probable that it was
not the roof of the cave, but my mind, which had given way under the
influence of undue pressure.

The contemptuous manner in which I had been received aroused within me a
very unusual state of mind. While talking to Mr. Havelot I heard not
far away in some part of the house a voice singing. It was the voice
of Agnes, and I believed she sang so that I could hear her. But as her
sweet tones reached my ear there came to me at the same time the harsh,
contemptuous words of her father. I left the house determined to crush
that man to the earth beneath a superincumbent mass of ice--or the
evidence of the results of the ownership of such a mass--which would
make