was being conducted in this room, and I arrived in that way at the rate
of a candle's consumption when sheltered from the wind. Having proved
his trial candle's rate, he blew it out--I have already shown it to you
--and put his inch-marks on a fresh one.

"He put the fresh one into a tin candlestick. Then at the five-hour mark
he bored a hole through the candle with a red-hot wire. I have already
shown you the wire, with a smooth coat of tallow on it--tallow that had
been melted and had cooled.

"With labor--very hard labor, I should say--he struggled up through the
stiff chaparral that clothes the steep hillside back of Flint Buckner's
place, tugging an empty flour-barrel with him. He placed it in that
absolutely secure hiding-place, and in the bottom of it he set the
candlestick. Then he measured off about thirty-five feet of fuse--the
barrel's distance from the back of the cabin. He bored a hole in the
side of the barrel--here is the large gimlet he did it with. He went on
and finished his work; and when it was done, one end of the fuse was in
Buckner's cabin, and the other end, with a notch chipped in it to expose
the powder, was in the hole in the candle--timed to blow the place up at
one o'clock this morning, provided the candle was lit about eight o'clock
yesterday evening--which I am betting it was--and provided there was an
explosive in the cabin and connected with that end of the fuse--which I
am also betting there was, though I can't prove it. Boys, the barrel is
there in the chaparral, the candle's remains are in it in the tin stick;
the burnt-out fuse is in the gimlet-hole, the other end is down the hill
where the late cabin stood. I saw them all an hour or two ago, when the
Professor here was measuring off unimplicated vacancies and collecting
relics that hadn't anything to do with the case."