lack shadow of the pole
as it stretched along the ground almost to his feet, "we'll find out how
near right your inside is."

He took a piece of steel tape from his pocket and handed it to his chum.

"How long is it, Ross?" he asked. He bent down eagerly and watched the
measuring of the shadow.

"Four feet, six inches," the older lad announced.

The negro looked at the shadow a moment and then burst into a hearty
laugh.

"What is it, Dan'l?"

"Why, Mistah Ross, it ain't no use for yo' to measure that! Yo' done
forgot that a shadder don't stay still."

"Why not?"

"A shadder keeps movin' round. Yo' ought to have thought o' that," he
added seriously.

"We thought of it, all right, Dan'l," Anton answered. "See, the line of
the shadow's already on one side of the tape. Try it again, Ross!"

"Four feet, five inches and three quarters," came the reply.

"What fo' makes that shorter?" queried the negro.

"Dan'l," said the younger boy, reprovingly, "why don't you use that
thick head of yours a little? When you get up in the morning, isn't your
shadow longer than it is in the middle of the day?"

"Sho', it stretches away off yonder!"

"And in the evening?"

"Jest as far."

"And around noon-time?"

"It's right short."

"Then," said the crippled lad, "don't you see that if we measure where
the morning shadow stops growing shorter and the afternoon shadow begins
growing longer, that'll be the middle of the day?"

The darky slapped the side of his leg with a resounding smack.

"Who'd have thought o' that, now?" he said. "It sho' does look like you
was right."

Ross bent down and measured the shadow.

"I think we'd better put in a peg to mark it," he said, looking up; "it
doesn't seem to be changing so much. I can only make it five and
five-eighths, now."

Anton stuck a sharpened peg in the ground and took out the little silver
watch that had been given him on his birthday.

"It's not nearly twelve o'clock by my watch yet," he said.

"That's standard time," Ross reminded him; "don't forget that we're not
right on the line of standard time here, Anton. That's New Orleans time
you've got, not sun time."

"Is thar more'n one kind of time?" the darky asked. "Ain't time, jest
time, all over?"

"I should say not!" declared both boys at once, "it's never the same
true time at any two places in the world."

"That is," corrected Ross, "unless they happen to be due north and
south."

"Yo' makin' a joke