Sentence:  He improvised as he went along , completing a life-size clay figure , then bought <WSD>yards</WSD> of an inexpensive material from a draper , wet the lightweight cloth in a basin and covered it over with clay that Argiento brought from the bank of the Tiber , to the consistency of thick mud . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  a unit of length equal to 3 feet; defined as 91.44 centimeters; originally taken to be the average length of a stride