In one corner stood a large box, a part of the building itself: it was
eight feet high and open at the top, and it had been constructed as a
sawdust magazine from which was drawn material for the horse's bed in
a stall on the other side of the partition. The big box, so high and
towerlike, so commodious, so suggestive, had ceased to fulfil its
legitimate function; though, providentially, it had been at least half
full of sawdust when the horse died. Two years had gone by since that
passing; an interregnum in transportation during which Penrod's father
was "thinking" (he explained sometimes) of an automobile. Meanwhile, the
gifted and generous sawdust-box had served brilliantly in war and peace:
it was Penrod's stronghold.

There was a partially defaced sign upon the front wall of the box; the
donjon-keep had known mercantile impulses:

The O. K. RaBiT Co.
PENROD ScHoFiELD AND CO.
iNQuiRE FOR PRicEs

This was a venture of the preceding vacation, and had netted, at one
time, an accrued and owed profit of $1.38. Prospects had been brightest
on the very eve of cataclysm. The storeroom was locked and guarded, but
twenty-seven rabbits and Belgian hares, old and young, had perished here
on a single night--through no human agency, but in a foray of cats, the
besiegers treacherously tunnelling up through the sawdust from the small
aperture which opened into the stall beyond the partition. Commerce has
its martyrs.

Penrod climbed upon a barrel, stood on tiptoe, grasped the rim of the