Meanwhile, it must be asked how proceedings so remarkable could have escaped the notice, not only of the government, but of the entire neighbourhood. This, it must be remembered, was most populous. There were people living in the very building, a part of which sheltered the conspirators. Around, were thickly clustered the dwellings of the keeper of the Wardrobe, auditors and tellers of the Exchequer, and other such officials.[149] There were tradespeople and workmen constantly employed close to the spot where the work was going on; while the public character of the place makes it impossible to suppose that tenants such as Percy and his friends, who were little better than lodgers, could claim the exclusive use of anything beyond the rooms they rented--even when allowed the use of these--or could shut against the neighbours and visitors in general the precincts of so much frequented a spot. How, then, did they dispose of the mass of soil dug out in making a tunnel through which barrels and hogsheads were to be conveyed? No man who has had practical experience of the unexpected quantity of earth which comes out of the most insignificant excavation, will be likely to rest satisfied with the explanation officially given, that it was sufficiently concealed by being hidden beneath the turf in the little garden adjoining.[150] What, moreover, was done with the great stones that came out of the foundations? Of these there must have been on hand at least some sixty cubic feet, probably much more, and they, at any rate, can scarcely have been stowed away beneath the turf. What, above all, of the noise made during the space of a couple of months, in assaulting a wall "very hard to beat through"? It is a matter of common observation how sound travels in the ground, and every stroke of the pick upon the stone must have been distinctly heard for more than a hundred yards all around, constituting a public nuisance. Meanwhile, not only were there people living close by on every side, but men were constantly at work right over the heads of the diggers, and only a few feet from them: yet we are required to believe that neither these nor any others had any notion that anything unusual was going on.