"Before the assistant surveyor could think of any other harm done than
the possible choking of the child, the child's mother and the great
surveyor entered the tent. 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