"It must be after the time we set, isn't it, Thad?" Bob finally asked, in a low voice, when they rested again.
The scoutmaster could not look at his little cheap but reliable watch without striking a match; and there was really no necessity for doing that. It made very little difference whether they were ahead, or somewhat behind the hour arranged for their meeting with Polly. And besides, there were 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."