'Let's roll it forward to the light.' The two men rolled the barrel from the corner, and stood it on end before the fire.
'It's heavy enough to be oysters,' remarked Michael judiciously.
'Shall we open it at once ?' enquired the artist, who had grown decidedly cheerful under the combined effects of company and gin; and without waiting for a reply, he began to strip as if for a prize-fight, tossed his clerical collar in the wastepaper basket, hung his clerical coat upon a nail, and with a chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other, struck the first blow of the evening.
'That's the style, William Dent' cried Michael.

'There's fire for--your money! It may be a romantic visit from one of the young ladies--a sort of Cleopatra business.

Have a care and don't stave in Cleopatra's head.' But the sight of Pitman's alacrity was infectious.

The lawyer could sit still no longer.

Tossing his cigar into the fire, he snatched the instrument from the unwilling hands of the artist, and fell to himself.
Soon the sweat stood in beads upon his large, fair brow; his stylish trousers were defaced with iron rust, and the state of his chisel testified to misdirected energies.
A cask is not an easy thing to open, even when you set about it in the right way; when you set about it wrongly, the whole structure must be resolved into its elements.