ere other ways of telling time pretty accurately,
without even having a watch along.

Thad glanced up into the heavens. He had often studied the bright worlds
and suns to be seen there, and knew considerable about the positions
they occupied, changing, it might be, with the coming and going of the
seasons.

"It's just close on to midnight, Bob," he observed, presently.

Of course Bob was at once interested.

"You're saying that because of the stars, Thad," he remarked. "Please
tell me how you managed to tell."

"It's like this," the scoutmaster replied, not averse to pointing a
lesson that might be seed sown in fertile ground; "notice those three
rather small stars in the northeast, all in a line and pointing
downward? Well, those are what they call the belt of Orion, the Hunter.
They point nearly direct down to a mighty bright blue star that you see
there, twinkling like everything."

"Yes, I've often noticed that, and I reckon it must be a planet near as
big as Venus or Jupiter," remarked the other boy.

Thad laughed.

"Well," he remarked, "I guess now you'd think me crazy if I told you
just how far that same star is away from us right now, ever so many
times further than either of the planets you speak of. Why, Bob, that's
Sirius, the Dog Star, said to be the biggest sun known to astronomers.
Our little sun wouldn't make a spot beside that terrible monster; which
may be the central sun, around which all the other tens of thousands
revolve everlastingly."

"Oh! yes, I've heard of the Dog Star, but never reckoned it amounted to
anything in particular," declared the Southern lad, interested, in spite
of the anxiety that was gnawing at his heart all the while; "but suppose
you go on, suh, and explain to me how you can tell the time of night by
consulting the Dog Star. You sure have got me to guessing."

"Nothing could be easier, if only you'd put your mind to it, and think,
Bob?" continued the patrol leader. "These stars and planets rise at a
certain hour every night. It grows later all the while, and many of them
are not seen only half of the year, because they are above us in the
daytime the rest of the twelve months. Now suppose you had watched that
star, as I did last night, and knew just when it crept above that
mountain ridge over yonder; you'd have a line on when it could be
expected to come up to-night. Now do you see?"

"Well, it's as simple as two and two make four," replied Bob. "And so
that's th