While Kenneth was carefully stretching the tape over the ground in a straight line to the base of the pine, a couple of the boys smiled, for they had caught on to the ingenious scheme of Mike. The yellow tape was a dozen feet long and divided as usual into fractions of an inch. When the owner after using the full length several times grasped it part way between the ends with his thumb and forefinger, so that they touched the bark near the ground, he straightened up and made a quick mental calculation.
“How fur are we apart?” asked Mike from his first position.
“Sixty-two feet, eight inches,” was the reply.
“Come hither and while me young friend is doing the same, the rist of ye may get your pencils and bits of paper riddy.”
When Kenneth reached the master of ceremonies, he was standing in the oasis of sunlight. Resting one end of the buckthorn cane which he carried on the ground, he held the stick exactly vertical.
“Will ye oblige me by measuring the shadow of the same?”
It was done in a twinkling.
“It is one foot, one inch.”
By this time every one of the smiling scouts understood the simple method by which Mike proposed to solve the problem. He called to them:
“The length of me shillalah is three feet, two inches; the length of its shadow is one foot, one inch; the length of the shadow of the pine is sixty-two feet, eight inches: what more can ye ask of me?”