PAGE 21
My Terminal Moraine
by
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.