"and he hath taken his man with him."

"That is very well--" began the gentleman's voice; and then no more.

Presently I heard one of the men of the house, named Dick--a good friend
of mine, ask what they were after me for; and some fellow, as he went
by, answered:

"--Consorting with the Jesuits, and conspiring--" and no more.

So, then, I lay and listened. Much that I heard had no relevance at all,
for it was the protesting of maids and such-like. The footsteps went
continually up and down; sometimes voices rose in anger; sometimes it
was only a whisper that went by. I heard presses open and shut; and once
or twice the noise of hammering overhead; and then silence again; but no
silence was for long.

Here again I find it very hard to say all that I felt during that
search. My thoughts came and went like pictures upon the dark. Now my
heart would so beat that it sickened me, of sheer terror that I should
be found; and this especially when a man would stay for a while talking
on the stairs within an arm's length of where I lay: now it was as I
might say, more of the intellect; and I pondered on what I heard my
Cousin Tom say, and marvelled at his shrewdness; for fear, if it does
not drive away wits, sharpens them wonderfully. He had, of course, put
me in greater peril, by saying that I was gone to Rome; but he had saved
himself very adroitly, for no witness in the house could tell that I had
not done so; for here was my chamber empty, and I and my man and my
clothes and my books and my horses all vanished away. At one time, then,
I was all eyes and ears in the muffled dark, hearing my heart thump as