ourth day. "There is nothing doing on the plain, I find."

"A walk? Oh, yes!" I said. "Where shall we go?"

"To look for wonderful things," he said.

"Only don't take the child among the rattlesnakes," said Mrs.
Sandford. "_They_ are wonderful, I suppose, but not pleasant. You will
get her all tanned, Grant!"

But I took these hints of danger as coolly as the doctor himself did;
and another of my West Point delights began.

We went beyond the limits of the post, passed out at one of the gates
which shut it in from the common world, and forgot for the moment
drums and fifes. Up the mountain side, under the shadow of the trees
most of the time, though along a good road; with the wild hill at one
hand rising sharp above us. Turning round that, we finally plunged
down into a grand dell of the hills, leaving all roads behind and all
civilization, and having a whole mountain between us and the West
Point plain. I suppose it might have been a region for rattlesnakes,
but I never thought of them. I had never seen such a place in my life.
From the bottom of the gorge where we were, the opposite mountain side
sloped up to a great height; wild, lonely, green with a wealth of
wood, stupendous, as it seemed to me, in its towering expanse. At our
backs, a rocky and green precipice rose up more steeply yet, though to
a lesser elevation, topped with the grey walls of the old fort, the
other face of which I had seen from our hotel. A wilderness of nature
it was; wild and stern. I feasted on it. Dr. Sandford was moving
about, looking for something; he helped me over rocks, and jumped me
across morasses, and kept watchful guard of me; but else he let me
alone; he did not talk, and I had quite enough without. The strong
delight of the novelty, the freedom, the delicious wild things around,
the bracing air, the wonderful lofty beauty, made me as happy as I
thought I could be. I feasted on the rocks and wild verdure, the
mosses and ferns and lichen, the scrub forest and tangled undergrowth,
among which we plunged and scrambled: above all, on those vast leafy
walls which shut in the glen, and almost took away my breath with
their towering lonely grandeur. All this time Dr. Sandford was as busy
as a bee, in quest of something. He was a great geologist and
mineralogist; a lover of all natural science, but particularly of
chemistry and geology. When I stopped to look at him, I thought he
must have put his own tastes in his pocket for severa