“How can we learn that?” asked Chester Haynes.
“Measure it. You know little of woodcraft if you cannot tell the precise height of such a tree when the sun is shining.”
And now came Mike Murphy’s triumph.
CHAPTER X—A Few Native Trees
It was the qualification in the Instructor’s remark, “when the sun is shining,” that gave the quick-witted Mike his clue.
“My first plan was to climb to the top,” said he with that gravity which he knew so well how to assume, “but I feared I should tumble before I could complete the measuring of the same, as me mither’s second cousin did whin he tried to climb the lightning rod of the church backward. Obsarve me.”
Every eye was fixed upon the Irish youth who, while speaking, had been scrutinizing his surroundings. The pine towered fully twenty feet above any of its near neighbors. The wood was so open that the shadow of the top fell athwart a small natural clearing to the westward. Mike walked to the conical patch of shade, stood on its farthest edge, and facing the puzzled spectators, crooked his finger.
“Have one of ye sich a thing as a measuring tape in yer pockets?”
The majority carried the useful article, coiled around a spring in a flat, circular metal box. Three boys started on a trot toward Mike, but Kenneth Mitchell out-sped his companions.
“Now, if ye’ll measure the precise distance from the tip of me shoe to the fut of the pine, ye’ll have the satisfaction of doing a good turn for the rest of the byes, as me dad did whin he fixed things so that six men instead of two had a share in the shindy at Tipperary on his birthday.”