and the streets of peterburg were empty as per their solemn custom and the brownback paraded the mangled tesser of his phantasms and projected them against the placid walls of the houses aligned on either side of brownbacks stroll and it was after hours of course the brownback never came out when there was work around him for he could always be blinded by splinters from its buzz saw but this night as he crawled onto a little houses welcome mat for a nap and just as he was fishing out what precious comforts the mat could afford to part with he was accosted by a policeman a tall grasshopper of a policeman and the policeman said that what the browncoat was doing was unnatural .