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There was much to do, very much to do; he achieved his task towards morning. When day dawned, there was nothing but water in the water-butt, and in the Tower no furnishings were visible save three chairs a high carved one by the fireplace, and two much smaller on the little platform under the window. The faded old red carpet on the floor was the only attempt at decoration.
An honest man would not have cashed the bill; a humane man would not have accepted in silence the tragic contents of the water-butt; a man, who was not already up to the hilts in gore, would have lacked the means of secretly disposing them. This process of reasoning left a horrid image of the monster, Pitman.
It was the aperture between the two great barrels the brandy-cask and the water-butt. I fancied he would return the same way, if he came back at all; and it occurred to me that if I were to stop up all the other apertures except that one which I could easily do with pieces of cloth let him come in, and then suddenly cut off his retreat by caulking that one also, I should have him in the trap.
There never was such a week of discoveries and surprises as the first week at that cottage. Every night when Nicholas came home, something new had been found. One day it was a grape-vine, and another day it was a boiler, and another day it was the key of the front parlour cupboard at the bottom of the water-butt, and so on through a hundred items.
When he rejoined her, Mary was sitting in the armchair by the fire; she heard his account of the state of affairs up-to-date with a thoughtful smile, smoking a cigarette; her smile broadened over the tale of the water-butt. She had put on the fur cloak in which she had walked to the cottage the fire was out and the room cold; framed in the furs, the outline of her face looked softer.
There were still two other directions in which I might search the one directly in front, and that toward the left, which last I knew to be in the direction of the bows of the ship. In front, the space was taken up by the great water-butt, and of course I did not think of cutting a way through this. It would lead to the loss of my supply of water.
When hunger pressed, I took a small portion, sufficient to stop its gnawings. I suffered chiefly from thirst, as I was afraid of getting up to go to the water-butt, lest I should be thrown over to the opposite side after I had drawn out the spile, before I could catch any water as it spouted out, and that much of it would be lost.
And the basket would do to bring the cherries back in if they found any. She also lent them her silver watch so that they should not be late for tea. Peter's Waterbury had taken it into its head not to go since the day when Peter dropped it into the water-butt. And they started.
Two or three of the area railings were gone, the water-butt was broken, the knocker was loose, the bell-handle had been pulled off a long time to judge from the rusty state of the wire, and dirty footprints on the steps were the only signs of its being inhabited.
There were small grubby daffodils in it, and dirty-faced little primroses, and an arbor beside the water-butt, bare at this time of the year, but still a real arbor. And an elder-tree that in the hot weather had flat, white flowers on it big as tea-plates. And a lilac-tree with brown buds on it. Beautiful. "Say, matey, just you chuck it! Chuck it, I say!
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