Turning to the guide he said:

"Suppose we lunch here," and taking out his watch continued, "yes, it
is high time; twelve thirty to the minute."

The boy stepped forward involuntarily for a look at the queer, pretty
thing in the man's hand.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Why, that's a watch, son. Didn't you ever see one?" said the man
kindly.

The guide smiled derisively: "Wal, I reckons not," while the boy, too
interested for reply, asked again:

"What's a watch?" and the man with his genial laugh said:

"Son, we will be greatly pleased if you will take lunch with us. My
name is Polk, Samuel Polk," he said, touching his cap with the
unfailing courtesy of a true gentleman. "And after we eat I will show
you the watch and tell you all about it."

But the mountaineer does not readily eat with "furriners," so Steve
stood near by and looked on while the two men ate very strange things.
Little cans were opened and tiny fish taken out that looked
exceedingly queer. Mr. Polk, trying to persuade the boy to eat,
explained that these were sardines, some square, white things were
crackers, a thick stuff was cheese and that some big, round, yellow
things were oranges. But Steve only stared in silence till the meal
was over though Tige, with no instinctive handicap, accepted delicious
scraps with astonishment and relish.

So amazed, however, had the boy been with it all that he nearly
forgot about the watch. But when he remembered and the man let him
take it in his rusty, brown fingers, that was the most wonderful
moment of all. The tick, tick inside was a marvel, almost a thing
uncanny to the boy, and when it was explained how the hands went round
and round, telling the time of day, it surely seemed a thing beyond
mortal ken.

The guide drawled out with a superior air: "Wal, sonny, you come from
the backwoods shore ef you never heerd tell of a watch before."

The boy looked squarely at him in sullen resentment a moment, but with
such opportunity at hand he wouldn't waste time with the likes of him.
He asked, "What moves them things round?" and the man kindly opened
the watch at the back and displayed all the cunning wheels which
respond to the loosening spring, explained how it was wound each day
to keep it from running down, and in answer to the boy's eager
questions as to how such things were made told him something of watch
manufacture.

At last the wonderful hour was over and the two strange men prepared
to leave.