How the millions of his native city and of other cities and towns, and even of the country districts, all moved upon schedule! Clocks and watches told them when to get up, when to eat their breakfasts, when to catch their trains, reach their work, eat their lunches, and return to their homes. Newspapers came out at certain hours; mails were delivered at definite moments; stores and mills and factories all began their work at specified times. What a tremendous activity there was, back there in America, and how smoothly it all ran—smooth as clock-work! Why, you might almost say it ran _by_ clock-work! The millions of watches in millions of pockets, the millions of clocks on millions of walls, all running steadily together—these were what kept the complicated machinery of modern life from getting tangled and confused. Yes; but what did people do before they had such timepieces? Back in the very beginning, before they had invented or manufactured anything—far back in the days of the caveman—even those people must have had _some_ method of telling time. A bright star drew above the shadowy outline of a hill. At first the man in khaki thought that it might be a distant star-shell; but no, it was too steady and too still. Ah yes, the _stars_ were there, even in the very beginning—and the moon and the sun, they were as regular then as now; perhaps these were the timepieces of his earliest ancestors. A slight rustle of anticipation stirred through the waiting line and his thoughts flashed back to the present. His eyes fixed themselves again on the ghostly splinters of light at his wrist. The long hand had almost reached the figure 4—the moment when the bombardment would begin. He and his comrades braced themselves—and the night was shattered by the crash of artillery. CHAPTER ONE _The Man Animal and Nature's Timepieces_ The story of the watch that you hold in your hand to-day began countless centuries ago, and is as long as the history of the human race. When our earliest ancestors, living in caves, noted the regular succession of day and night, and saw how the shadows changed regularly in length and direction as day grew on toward night, then was the first, faint, feeble germ of the beginning of time-reckoning and time-measurement. The world was very, very young, so far as man was concerned, when there occurred some such scene as this: