Even so, a great light was beginning to percolate to my innermost consciousness.  A grave doubt pestered me through our days of camping there in the autumnal wilderness.  When we had emerged from the woods and had reached Montreal on the homeward trip I enticed my friend upon a penny-in-the-slot weighing machine in the Montreal station and I observed what he weighed; and then when he stepped aside I unostentatiously weighed myself, and in the box score credited myself with a profound shock; also with an error, which should have been entered up a long time before that.

Approximately, we were of the same height and in bone structure not greatly unlike.  I had figured that daily tramping after game should have taken a few folds of superfluous flesh off my frame, and so, no doubt, it had done.  Yet I had pulled the spindle around the face of the dial to a point which recorded for me a total of sixteen pounds and odd ounces more than his penny had registered for him.

If he was fat, unmistakably and conclusively fat and he was—­what then was I?  In Troy weight—­Troy where the hay scales come from—­the answer was written.  I was fat as fat, or else the machine had lied.  And as between me and that machine I could pick the liar at the first pick.

CHAPTER V

On Acquiring Some Snappy Pores

That night on the sleeper a splendid resolution sprouted within me.  Next morning when we arrived home it was ready and ripe for plucking.  I would trim myself down to more lithesome proportions and I would start the job right away.  It did not occur to me that cutting down my daily consumption of provender might prove helpful to the success of the proposed undertaking.  Or if it did occur to me I put the idea sternly from me, for I was by way of being a robust trencherman.  I had joyed in the pleasures of the table, and I had written copiously of those joys, and I now declined to recant of my faith or to abate my indulgences.

All this talk which I had heard about balanced rations went in at one ear and out at the other.  I knew what a balanced ration was.  I stowed one aboard three times daily—­at morn, again at noon and once more at nightfall.  A balanced ration was one which, being eaten, did not pull you over on your face; one which you could poise properly if only you leaned well back, upon arising from the table, and placed the two hands, with a gentle lifting motion, just under the overhang of the main cargo hold.

Surely there must be some way of achieving the desired result other than by following dieting devices.  There was—­exercising was the answer.  I would exercise and so become a veritable faun.