Читать книгу A West Point Treasure; Or, Mark Mallory's Strange Find онлайн

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Chauncey and Indian brought up the rear. Chauncey was picking his way delicately along, fearful of spoiling a beautiful new shine he had just had put on. And Indian was in mortal terror lest some of the ghosts, bears, tramps or snakes which the yearlings had assured him filled the woods, should spring out upon his fat, perspiring little self.

The government property at West Point extends for some four miles up the Hudson, and quite a distance into the wild mountains to the rear. The government property is equivalent to “cadet limits,” and so the woods are freely roamed by the venturesome lads on holiday afternoons.

The Parson was never more thoroughly in his element than he was just then. He was a learned professor, escorting a group of patient and willing pupils. The information which he gave out in solid chunks that afternoon would have filled an encyclopædia. A dozen times every hour he would stop and hold forth upon some newly observed object.

But it was when on geology that the Parson was at home. He might dabble in all sciences; in fact, he considered it the duty of a scholar to do so; but geology was his specialty, his own, his pet and paragon. And never did he wax so eloquently as when he was talking of geology, “That science which unravels the mysteries of ages, that reads in the rocks of the present the silent stories of the years that are dead.”