hink, an' please your honour, quoth Trim, the fortifications are
quite destroyed--and the bason is upon a level with the mole--I think
so too; replied my uncle Toby with a sigh half suppress'd--but step into
the parlour, Trim, for the stipulation--it lies upon the table.

It has lain there these six weeks, replied the corporal, till this very
morning that the old woman kindled the fire with it--

--Then, said my uncle Toby, there is no further occasion for our
services. The more, an' please your honour, the pity, said the corporal;
in uttering which he cast his spade into the wheel-barrow, which was
beside him, with an air the most expressive of disconsolation that can
be imagined, and was heavily turning about to look for his pickax, his
pioneer's shovel, his picquets, and other little military stores, in
order to carry them off the field--when a heigh-ho! from the sentry-box,
which being made of thin slit deal, reverberated the sound more
sorrowfully to his ear, forbad him.

--No; said the corporal to himself, I'll do it before his honour rises
to-morrow morning; so taking his spade out of the wheel-barrow again,
with a little earth in it, as if to level something at the foot of the
glacis--but with a real intent to approach nearer to his master, in
order to divert him--he loosen'd a sod or two--pared their edges with
his spade, and having given them a gentle blow or two with the back
of it, he sat himself down close by my uncle Toby's feet and began as
follows.

Chapter 4.XLIII.

It was a thousand pities--though I believe, an' please your honour, I am
going to say but a foolish kind of a thing for a soldier--

A soldier, cried my uncle Toby, interrupting the corporal, is no more
exempt from saying a foolish thing, Trim, than a man of letters--But not
so often, an' please your honour, replied the corporal--my uncle Toby
gave a nod.

It was a thousand pities then, said the corporal, casting his eye upon
Dunkirk, and the mole, as Servius Sulpicius, in returning out of Asia
(when he sailed from Aegina towards Megara), did upon Corinth and
Pyreus--

--'It was a thousand pities, an' please your honour, to destroy these
works--and a thousand pities to have let them stood.'--

--Thou art right, Trim, in both cases; said my uncle Toby.--This,
continued the corporal, is the reason, that from the beginning of their
demolition to the end--I have never once whistled, or sung, or laugh'd,
or cry'd, or talk'd of past