ty yawned
before me, it offered a not unnatural suggestion. The length of an
average man's head and trunk is under thirty-six inches. Allowing a few
inches more for his feet and ankles, a cavity forty-eight inches long is
amply sufficient for his accommodation. Flinging out the towels and
sheets that lay in the drawer, I got in and lay down with my knees drawn
up. Of course there was room and to spare.
"It was an interesting fact but not very applicable to present
circumstances. Still, it set me thinking. I went into the front room and
glanced out of the open window. A faint lightening of the murky sky
heralded the approach of dawn, and from afar came the murmur of
commencing traffic out in High Street. I was about to turn away when my
ear caught a new and unusual sound rising above that distant murmur; the
measured tread of feet mingling with the clatter of horses' hoofs and a
heavy, metallic rumbling. I looked out cautiously in the direction
whence the sounds came and was positively stupefied with amazement. At
the end of the street I saw, by the light of the lamps, a company of
soldiers appearing round the corner and taking up a position across the
road. I watched breathlessly. Soon, at a sign from the officer, the men
spread mats on the muddy ground and lay down on them, and then appeared
a train of horses, dragging a field-piece or quick-firing gun, which was
halted behind the infantry and unlimbered. A minute later the black
shapes of a number of soldiers appeared on the sky-line as they crept
along the parapets of the opposite houses where, save for their heads
and the barrels of their rifles, they presently disappeared.
"It seemed that I had misjudged the police in the matter of caution. It
almost seemed that my labors had been useless; for surely these
portentous preparations indicated some masterpiece of strategy. What an
anticlimax it would be when the defenders of the fort were found to be
dead! But what a still greater anticlimax if they were not there at all!
"At this moment a police sergeant strolled down the middle of the road
and, observing me, motioned to me with his hand to get inside out of
harm's way. I obeyed with grim amusement, thinking of that absurd
anticlimax; and somehow this idea began to connect itself with those two
bottom drawers. But the casks were the difficulty. The cooper from whom
I had obtained them sometimes kept me waiting nearly a week before
supplying them--for I was only a
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