Then he fastened the dial firmly on a stump, pointing the wire straight at the North Star.
“In the morning I can see if I am right. Good night, Mr. Floyd.”
“Good night, Fritz.”
For several weeks Fritz worked about the place timing his labor by his ingenious invention. Sometimes he would work after the shadows had passed the quitting hour.
“The dial tells us,” I said to him one day, “that it is time to stop work.”
“No,” he said, “sun-dials are never exact; sometimes they vary fifteen minutes, at least. For the Earth goes around the Sun not in a circle but in an ellipse. I will work a little longer.”
One Sunday I overheard Fritz talking excitedly out near the spot where the dial was stationed. I thought he had for the moment forgotten he was a Self Master—as all men are likely at times to forget. But when I went out to check the noise, I found that Fritz had ten or fifteen of the men standing in front of him and he was saying:
“It is easy to do—to measure the distance to the Sun, or the distance from one planet to another. There are a hundred methods, many of them as simple as it is to measure the length of a building.”
“You are a student of astronomy?” I asked.