These smaller lumps, with the exception of two, he put into the zinc bucket, wrapped around with pieces of coffee sacking.

Then he put the cover on the bucket to exclude the air.
The zinc bucket was thus a portable refrigerator, or rather, ice house.
Taking one of the lumps of ice which he had left out of the zinc bucket for immediate use, Elmer carefully and methodically broke it into still smaller pieces--pieces about the size of an English walnut, but irregular in shape.

Then he inserted the tin funnel into a small hole in the uppermost surface of the unpainted, oblong box and dropped in twenty or more of the little pieces of ice.

When a piece proved to be too big to go through the funnel Elmer broke it again.
Cleggett noticed that there were five of these small holes in the box, and that Elmer was slowly working his way down the length of it from hole to hole, sitting astride of it the while.
From the way in which he worked, and the care with which he conserved every smallest particle of ice, Elmer's motto seemed to be: "Haste not, waste not." But he did not appear to derive any great satisfaction from his task, let alone joy.

In fact, Elmer seemed to be a joyless individual; one who habitually looked forward to the worst.
On his broad face, of the complexion described in police reports as "pasty," melancholy sat enthroned.