THE GOLDEN FLEECE

A Romance

by JULIAN HAWTHORNE




CHAPTER I.

The professor crossed one long, lean leg
over the other, and punched down the
ashes in his pipe-bowl with the square tip
of his middle finger. The thermometer on
the shady veranda marked eighty-seven
degrees of heat, and nature wooed the soul to
languor and revery; but nothing could abate
the energy of this bony sage.

"They talk about their Atlantises,--their
submerged continents!" he exclaimed, with
a sniff through his wide, hairy nostrils.
"Why, Trednoke, do you realize that we
are living literally at the bottom of a
Mesozoic--at any rate, Cenozoic--sea?"

The gentleman thus indignantly addressed
contemplated his questioner with the serenity
of one conscious of freedom from geologic