WHEN _Susannah_ told the corporal the misadventure of the sash, with all the circumstances which attended the _murder_ of me,—(as she called it,)—the blood forsook his cheeks,—all accessaries in murder being principals,—_Trim_’s conscience told him he was as much to blame as _Susannah_,—and if the doctrine had been true, my uncle _Toby_ had as much of the bloodshed to answer for to heaven, as either of ’em;—so that neither reason or instinct, separate or together, could possibly have guided _Susannah_’s steps to so proper an asylum. It is in vain to leave this to the Reader’s imagination:——to form any kind of hypothesis that will render these propositions feasible, he must cudgel his brains sore,—and to do it without,—he must have such brains as no reader ever had before him.—Why should I put them either to trial or to torture? ’Tis my own affair: I’ll explain it myself. C H A P. XIX ’TIS a pity, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, resting with his hand upon the corporal’s shoulder, as they both stood surveying their works,—that we have not a couple of field-pieces to mount in the gorge of that new redoubt;—’twould secure the lines all along there, and make the attack on that side quite complete:——get me a couple cast, _Trim._ Your honour shall have them, replied _Trim_, before tomorrow morning. It was the joy of _Trim_’s heart, nor was his fertile head ever at a loss for expedients in doing it, to supply my uncle _Toby_ in his campaigns, with whatever his fancy called for; had it been his last crown, he would have sate down and hammered it into a paderero, to have prevented a single wish in his master. The corporal had already,—what with cutting off the ends of my uncle _Toby_’s spouts—hacking and chiseling up the sides of his leaden gutters,—melting down his pewter shaving-bason,—and going at last, like _Lewis_ the Fourteenth, on to the top of the church, for spare ends, &c.——he had that very campaign brought no less than eight new battering cannons, besides three demi-culverins, into the field; my uncle _Toby_’s demand for two more pieces for the redoubt, had set the corporal at work again; and no better resource offering, he had taken the two leaden weights from the nursery window: and as the sash pullies, when the lead was gone, were of no kind of use, he had taken them away also, to make a couple of wheels for one of their carriages. He had dismantled every sash-window in my uncle _Toby_’s house long before, in the very same way,—though not always in the same order; for sometimes the pullies have been wanted, and not the lead,—so then he began with the pullies,—and the pullies being picked out, then the lead became useless,—and so the lead went to pot too. ——A great MORAL might be picked handsomely out of this, but I have not time—’tis enough to say, wherever the demolition began, ’twas equally fatal to the sash window. C H A P. XX