. The arms of the first reached for her
offspring, and of the second for the subject of his experiment.

"'My chronometer!'

"'The child of the fish-woman ate it!'

"The fish-woman screamed, and reversed the urchin after the manner of
mothers, and swung him to and fro like a pendulum. He came up a trifle
red in the face, but laughing as usual, and the ludicrous
inappositeness of the great loss, the unconscious cause of it, the
baby's wonderful digestion, the assistant's distress, and the
surveyor's calm but pallid self-control, made Jeremiah Dixon, dropping
in at the minute, roar with laughter.

"'Dixon,' said Mason, 'the work of half my life, my everlasting
timepiece, just completed and set going, has found a temperature where
it requires no compensation balance.'

"'I am glad of it,' said his associate, 'for now we can proceed with
Mason and Dixon's line, and nothing else!'

"A look, more of pity than of reproach, passed over Mason's scarcely
ruffled face--the pity of one man solely conscious of a great object
lost, for another, indifferent or ignorant both of the object and the
loss. He took the smiling urchin in his hands, and raising it upon his
shoulder, placed his ear to its side. Thence came with faint
regularity the sound of a simple, gentle ticking. They all heard it by
turns, and, while they paused in puzzled wonder and humor, the
undaunted infant looked down as innocent as a chubby, cheery face
painted on some household clock. The innocent expression of the child
touched the mathematician's heart. He filled a glass with good Madeira
wine, and drank the devourer's health in these benignant words:

"'May Minuit's baby run as long and as true as the article on which he
has made his meal!'

"Next day they set the great stone in the corner of the State of
Maryland, and, breaking camp, vanished westward through the cleft of
light opened by their pioneers, pursued yet for many miles by a motley
multitude.

"Before many years this fertile country filled up with hamlets,
mills, and churches; the War of Independence scarcely interrupted its
prosperity, because the Quaker element adhered with constancy to
neither side, and only one campaign was fought here. The story of the
boy who ate a watch passed out of general knowledge and remark; he was
known to have been a drummer at the battle of Chadd's Ford, and to
have buried his mother before the close of the war, at the Delaware
fishing hamlet of Marcus Hook,