Dick and Pennington sat up. Warner's words were earnest and portentous. Besides, they were very long, which indicated that he was not jesting.
“Go ahead, George. Show us what it is!” said Dick eagerly.
Warner drew from the inside pocket of his waist coat a worn volume which he handled lovingly.
“This,” he said, “is the algebra, with which I won the highest honors in our academy. I have missed it many and many a time since I came into this war. It is filled with the most beautiful problems, Dick, questions which will take many a good man a whole night to solve. When I think of the joyous hours I've spent over it some of the tenderest chords in my nature are touched.”
Pennington uttered a deep groan and buried his face in the grass. Then he raised it again and said mournfully:
“Let's make a solemn agreement, Dick, to watch over our poor comrade. I always knew that something was wrong with his mind, although he means well, and his heart is in the right place. As for me, as soon as I finished my algebra I sold it, and took a solemn oath never to look inside one again. That I call the finest proof of sanity anybody could give. 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. The sharp air of the northern winter blew down upon him, and he saw the clear waters of the little rivers, cold as ice, foaming over the stones. That air was sharp and vital, but, after a while, he came back to himself and closed his book with a sigh.
“Pardon me for inattention, boys,” he said, “but while I was enjoying my algebra I was also thinking of old times back there in Vermont, when nobody was shooting at anybody else.”