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 of me, Mistah Anton," declared Dan'l. "Not a bit of it," replied Anton. "I'll show you just why. The sun rises in the east, doesn't it?" "Sho'." "So, if you walked a long way east, you'd see the sun quicker, wouldn't you?" "Ah s'pose Ah would," the darky responded hesitatingly. "And your watch would show that the sun rose earlier." "Sho'!" "So noon would come sooner, too. And if you walked west, it would be longer before the sun rose and noon would be later, that is, figured by your watch." "Ah declah Ah never thought o' that!" "So, you see, every place has a different time." "But," the darky protested, "it's the same time when Ah goes to Vicksburg."