It was this that finished me.  I hurried through an early dinner, and taking the tape measure off the mantel I put it in my pocket as though it were a revolver or a bomb, and went off up the road feeling as adventurous as ever I felt in my life.  I never said a word to Harriet but disappeared quietly around the lilac bushes.  I was going to waylay that crew, and especially Bill.  I hoped to catch them at their nooning.

Well, I was lucky.  About a quarter of a mile up the road, in a little valley near the far corner of Horace’s farm, I found the truck, and Bill just getting out his dinner pail.  It seems they had flipped pennies and Bill hod been left behind with the truck and the tools while the others went down to the mill pond in the valley below.

“How are you?” said I.

“How are you?” said he.

I could see that he was rather cross over having been left behind.

“Fine day,” said I.

“You bet,” said he.

He got out his pail, which was a big one, and seated himself on the roadside, a grassy, comfortable spot near the brook which runs below into the pond.  There were white birches and hemlocks on the hill, and somewhere in the thicket I heard a wood thrush singing.

“Did you ever see John L. Sullivan?” I asked.

He glanced up at me quickly, but with new interest.

“No, did you?”

“Or Bob Fitzsimmons?”

“Nope—­but I was mighty near it once.  I’ve seen ’em both in the movies.”

“Well, sir,” said I, “that’s interesting.  I should like to see them myself.  Do you know what made me speak of them?”

He had spread down a newspaper and was taking the luncheon out of his “bucket,” as he called it, including a large bottle of coffee; but he paused and looked at me with keen interest.

“Well,” said I, “when I saw you dragging that wire yesterday I took you to be a pretty husky citizen yourself.”

He grinned and took a big mouthful from one of his sandwiches.  I could see that my shot had gone home.

“So when I got back last night,” I said, “I looked up the arm measurements of Sullivan and Fitzsimmons in a book I have and got to wondering how they compared with mine and yours.  They were considerably larger than mine—­”

Bill thought this a fine joke and laughed out in great good humour.

“But I imagine you’d not be far behind either of them.”

He looked at me a little suspiciously, as if doubtful what I was driving at or whether or not I was joking him.  But I was as serious as the face of nature; and proceeded at once to get out my tape measure.

“I get very much interested in such things,” I said, “and I had enough curiosity to want to see how big your arm really was.”

He smiled broadly.

“You’re a queer one,” said he.

But he took another bite of sandwich, and clenching his great fist drew up his forearm until the biceps muscles looked like a roll of Vienna bread—­except that they had the velvety gleam of life.  So I measured first one arm, then the other.