of the river : he was never seen alive again.
The Indian had decamped, and so far as I
know, was never captured. My business was
urgent, and I could stay no longer. Wearied
and dispirited I returned to the inn, and in a
few miuutes bade adieu for ever to Calumet
Island.

HAMMERING IT IN.

DEPRESSED by a severe cold, for which I
was indebted to the variable nature of .the
weather in the last days of November, I sat,
yesterday morning, in a despondent way
beside my coffee and dry-toast, roasted the
soles of my slippers, and read away my
digestion over the last murder recounted in
the Times. Suddenly I was startled by the
step of a man rushing hurriedly up-stairs;
the door of my sitting-room was burst open,
and my friend Boulder, flourishing in his
hand a heavy hammer, stood before me and
gasped out, "I've done it at last, Smith!
I've done it at last!" Boulder is a most
excitable man, with a wife and a large family
of boys. I looked aghast for marks of blood
upon the hammer—for a trace of human
hair in some crack of the handle.

"Which—who—how many?" I shouted.

"My son, Jack," he declared, "is the cause
of it all. He brought it upon me. O Smith,
my dear friend, would you have believed I
should have ever come to this? Cut me some
ham."

He sat down opposite me in an easy chair,
turned up his soles also to the fire, helped
himself to a thick slice of bread, and said
again,

"Cut me some ham. I must be off to the
hills in ten minutes, and it's well to fortify
myself, because I may miss dinner to-day."

"Sir! Mr. Boulder!"

"Let me ring for a cup and saucer. There,
now, go on with your breakfast, and I'll tell
you all about it. I was led to it entirely by
that hard-headed fellow, David Page."

"Page?"

David Page, F.G.S. Hark you! Three
weeks ago, Mrs. Boulder came to me, and
said, 'Peter.' I replied, 'Susannah.' She
said, 'Look at Jack's clean shirt.' She
showed me a shirt folded neatly, with its
front covered with red stains, and holes, and
indentations. 'Mercy,' I cried, 'what's the
cause of this?' Jack was at school—
round the corner, you know—Tickleby's
day-school. 'I wish to show you, Mr. B.,'
said my old girl, 'Jack's linen drawer.'
Followed my wife, looked in the drawer,
found it filled up with stones and dirt. In
the drawer below that, found clay, sand, and
old shells in his Sunday jacket. Caused the
dirt to be instantly carried to the dust-hole.
Further examined drawers in Jack's room,
and, in the corner of one, found a book entitled
'Advanced Text-Book of Geology, Descriptive
and Industrial, by David Page, F.G.S.'

That's what has done it, Peter,' Mrs. B.
said. 'That's the book I've seen him reading,
evening after evening.'  'He shall read
no more of it,' said I. 'The book is confiscated.'
When Jack came home at dinnertime
we had a great disturbance."

Here Mr. Boulder gasped over his ham,
and I felt painfully nervous. Boulder went
on:

"'Jack,' said I, 'you shall never more look
on that book.' I put it on my own library
table. I peeped into it; I looked into it; I
read bits of it; I read more of it; I liked it;
I studied it; I threw myself heart and soul
into it; I comprehended it;—I bought a
hammer."

Here Boulder caught his hammer up and
flourished it again. He was evidently stone-
mad.

"With this hammer, my boy, I break my
way into the treasury of Nature."

Here Boulder brought his hammer down,
and smashed my tea-cup.

"Ah, good!" he cried, taking a fragment
up. "A lucky accident. Look at the
crystalline fracture. What's here? Clay. What
makes the clay crystalline in its fracture?
Fire. Theory of the igneous rocks. Thickness
of the ponderable crust of the globe,
eight hundred miles. Depth at which most
of the rocks ordinarily found at the surface
would exist in a molten state, say five-and-
twenty miles. Undercrust of the globe,
granite. Here's a bit."

My excitable friend took from the mantelpiece
a handsome paper-weight of polished
stone.

"Some ass of a man has polished this fine
specimen of primitive rock." With one tap
of his hammer, Boulder broke it in two.
"Observe," he said, "the exquisite fracture."

"Exquisite—confound——"

"Never polish a fine specimen. The
geologist, my dear boy, is most particular to
show you a clean fracture and nothing else.
He breaks a stone, and takes pains not so
much as to dim with a finger's touch the
brilliance of the broken surface. Now
fractures are of various sorts, conchoidal or shell-
like, even, uneven, smooth, splintery, hackly.
Only look in this beautiful bit of granite, at
the silvery gleams of the mica and the suety
bits of quartz speckling the solid pudding of
the felspar. Quartz is, of simple minerals, one
of the hardest. I knock out a little chip of
granite, and you will observe that it is
impossible to powder the quartz in it by blows of
a hammer on the hearth-stone. You perceive
the hearth-stone breaks, but the quartz grains
remain uncomminuted."

"Mr. Boulder—" I began, faintly. I was
made somewhat weak and helpless by my
cold, or I should have met vigour with
vigour.

"Pardon me, Smith; they remain, I say,
uncomminuted. Let me advise you to be a
geologist. I am going to the hills to-day on