e geological examinations on my grounds,
which were situated, as he informed me, upon a terminal moraine,
a formation which he had not yet had an opportunity of practically
investigating.

I had not known that I lived on a moraine, and now that I knew it, I did
not care. But Tom Burton glowed with high spirits and lively zeal as he
told me how the great bluff on which my house stood, together with the
other hills and wooded terraces which stretched away from it along the
side of the valley, had been formed by the minute fragments of rock and
soil, which, during ages and ages, had been gradually pushed down from
the mountains by a great glacier which once occupied the country to the
northeast of my house. "Why, Walter, my boy," he cried, "if I had not
read it all in the books I should have known for myself, as soon as
I came here, that there had once been a glacier up there, and as it
gradually moved to the southwest it had made this country what it is.
Have you a stream down there in that dell which I see lies at right
angles with the valley and opens into it?"

"No," said I; "I wish there were one. The only stream we have flows
along the valley and not on my property."

Without waiting for me Tom ran down into my dell, pushed his way through
the underbrush to its upper end, and before long came back flushed with
heat and enthusiasm.

"Well, sir," he said, "that dell was once the bed of a glacial stream,
and you may as well clear it out and plant corn there if you want to,
for there never will be another stream flowing through it until there is
another glacier out in the country beyond. And now I want you to let
me dig about here. I want to find out what sort of stuff the glacier
brought down from the mountains. I will hire a man and will promise you
to fill up all the holes I make."

I had no objection to my friend's digging as much as he pleased, and
for three days he busied himself in getting samples of the soil of my
estate. Sometimes I went out and looked at him, and gradually a little
of his earnest ardor infused itself into me, and with some show of
interest I looked into the holes he had made and glanced over the
mineral specimens he showed me.

"Well, Walter," said he, when he took leave of me, "I am very sorry that
I did not discover that the glacier had raked out the bed of a gold mine
from the mountains up there and brought it down to you, or at any rate,
some valuable iron ore. But I am obliged to sa