at each tick the box gave a little bound. During the
screeches--which sounded more like the cries of an animal in an agony of
pain even than before--if it did not tilt itself first on one end, and
then on another, I shall never be willing to trust the evidence of my own
eyes again. And surely the box had increased in size; I could have sworn
not only that it had increased, but that it was increasing, even as I
stood there looking on. It had grown, and still was growing, both broader,
and longer, and deeper. Pugh, of course, would have attributed it to
supernatural agency; there never was a man with such a nose for a ghost. I
could picture him occupying my position, shivering in his nightshirt, as
he beheld that miracle taking place before his eyes. The solution which at
once suggested itself to me--and which would _never_ have suggested itself
to Pugh!--was that the box was fashioned, as it were, in layers, and that
the ingenious mechanism it contained was forcing the sides at once both
upward and outward. I took it in my hand. I could feel something striking
against the bottom of the box, like the tap, tap, tapping of a tiny
hammer.

"This is a pretty puzzle of Pugh's. He would say that that is the tapping
of a deathwatch. For my part I have not much faith in deathwatches, _et
hoc genus omne_, but it certainly is a curious tapping; I wonder what is
going to happen next?"

Apparently nothing, except a continuation of those mysterious sounds. That
the box had increased in size I had, and have, no doubt whatever. I should
say that it had increased a good inch in every direction, at least half an
inch while I had been looking on. But while I stood looking its growth was
suddenly and perceptibly stayed; it ceased to move. Only the noise
continued.

"I wonder how long it will be before anything worth happening does happen!
I suppose something is going to happen; there can't be all this to-do for
nothing. If it is anything in the infernal machine line, and there is
going to be an explosion, I might as well be here to see it. I think I'll
have a pipe."

I put on my dressing-gown. I lit my pipe. I sat and stared at the box. I
dare say I sat there for quite twenty minutes when, as before, without any
sort of warning, the sound was stilled. Its sudden cessation rather
startled me.

"Has the mechanism again hung fire? Or, this time, is the explosion
coming off?" It did not come off; nothing came off. "Isn't the box even
goin