During a period of seven years, from the time of his marriage, his life appears to have borne an entirely studious and domestic character, spent, most likely, principally at Raglan. To the ample leisure and quiet thus afforded him we may attribute all his lesser inventions, such as the numerous schemes for effecting and conveying secret correspondence, which in early and troubled times were esteemed as highly useful; some of his automata, amusive toys, drawing and other instruments and mechanical devices. He appears to have taken considerable interest in multiplying these comparatively minor inventions almost to exhaustion, as it were, of the several subjects to which they apply. So fertile, indeed, was this inventive faculty in him, that he himself has stated: “The more that you shall be pleased to make use of my inventions, the more inventive shall you ever find me, one invention begetting still another.”[H] Among his larger works we must rank his water-raising engines, in which his earliest efforts are exhibited in the water-works he erected in connection with the Citadel or Keep of Raglan Castle; which, as will be more minutely explained in a future commentary, belongs to this period. It probably depended for its operation on the influence of heat from burning fuel acting on a suitably constructed boiler containing water, and so arranged as to be able to apply the expansive force of steam to the driving of water through vertical pipes to a considerable elevation, which in this instance is supposed to have been limited to a large cistern on the summit of the Citadel or Donjon, known as the Tower of Gwent. This early work may, in fact, have been the occasion of calling in the aid of Caspar Kaltoff; and once thus employed, his after retention by such a master is readily conceivable. But master, and man, and works have all disappeared, and no printed, written, or drawn record or model remains of the waterworks there set up, to enable us to point distinctly to precise particulars of arrangement. All that the inquisitive and ingenious investigator can find to reward his most prying curiosity, are certain strange mysterious grooves in the external wall of the Citadel, on one side facing the moat and the castle, which point like a hieroglyphic inscription to the precise place where once stood in active operation the first practical application in a primitive form of a means of employing steam as a useful mechanical agent. [Illustration: Water-works side of the Citadel, Raglan Castle]