[132]
Very right, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby,—but you do not consider, Trim, that the towers, in Solomon's days, were not such things as our bastions, flank'd and defended by other works;—this, Trim, was an invention since Solomon's death; nor had they horn-works, or ravelins before the curtin, in his time;—or such a fossé as we make with a cuvette in the middle of it, and with cover'd-ways and counterscarps pallisadoed along it, to guard against a Coup de main:—So that the seven men upon the tower were a party, I dare say, from the Corps de Garde, set there, not only to look out, but to defend it.—They could be no more, an' please your Honour, than a Corporal's Guard.—My father smiled inwardly,—but not outwardly;—the subject between my uncle Toby and Corporal Trim being rather too serious, considering what hadhap-
