Oh, look at him, Dick! He's studying his blessed algebra and doesn't hear a word I say!" Warner was buried deep in the pages of a plus b and x minus y, and Dick and Pennington, rising solemnly, walked noiselessly from the presence around to the other side of the little opening where they lay down again.

The bit of nonsense relieved them, but it was far from being nonsense to Warner.

His soul was alight.

As he dived into the intricate problems memories came with them.

Lying there in the Southern thickets in the close damp heat of summer he saw again his Vermont mountains with their slopes deep in green and their crests covered with snow.