I gazed upon her with a sort of ferocious pity. Her professional days were numbered. _I_ also had her number! "How majestically she slumbers," whispered Dr. Delmour to me, "dreaming, doubtless, of her approaching triumph." Dr. Fooss and Professor Lezard, driving the pack-mules ahead of them, were already riding out across the marsh. "Daisy," I said, leaning from my saddle and taking one of her gloved hands into mine, "the time has come for me to disillusion you. There are no mammoths in that mud down there." She looked at me in blue-eyed amazement. "You are mistaken," she said; "Professor Bottomly is celebrated for the absolute and painstaking accuracy of her deductions and the boldness and the imagination of her scientific investigations. She is the most cautious scientist in America; she would never announce such a discovery to the newspapers unless she were perfectly certain of its truth." I was sorry for this young girl. I pressed her hand because I was sorry for her. After a few moments of deepest thought I felt so sorry for her that I kissed her. [Illustration: "I felt so sorry for her that I kissed her."] "You mustn't," said Dr. Delmour, blushing. The things we mustn't do are so many that I can't always remember all of them. "Daisy," I said, "shall we pledge ourselves to each other for eternity--here in the presence of this immemorial glacier which moves a thousand inches a year--I mean an inch every thousand years--here in these awful solitudes where incalculable calculations could not enlighten us concerning the number of cubic tons of mud in that marsh--here in the presence of these innocent mules--" "Oh, look!" exclaimed Dr. Delmour, lifting her flushed cheek from my shoulder. "There is a man in the hammock with Professor Bottomly!" I levelled my field-glasses incredulously. Good Heavens! There _was_ a man there. He was sitting on the edge of the hammock in a dejected attitude, his booted legs dangling. And, as I gazed, I saw the arm of Professor Bottomly raised as though groping instinctively for something in her slumber--saw her fingers close upon the blue-flannel shirt of her companion, saw his timid futile attempts to elude her, saw him inexorably hauled back and his head forcibly pillowed upon her ample chest. "Daisy!" I faltered, "what does yonder scene of presumable domesticity mean?" "I--I haven't the faintest idea!" she stammered. "Is that lady married! Or is this revelry?" I asked, sternly. "She wasn't married when she sailed from N-New-York," faltered Dr. Delmour. We rode forward in pained silence, spurring on until we caught up with Lezard and Fooss and the pack-mules; then we all pressed ahead, a prey, now, to the deepest moral anxiety and agitation. The splashing of our mule's feet on the partly melted surface of the mud aroused the man as we rode up and he scrambled madly to get out of the hammock as soon as he saw us.