Between this building and the house was a smaller and lower erection, a
mere out-house. It also was strongly built, however, and the roof, in
perfect condition, seemed newer than the walls: it had been raised and
strengthened when used by my uncle to contain a passage leading from the
house to the roof of the building just described, in which he was
fashioning for himself the retreat which he rightly called his study, for
few must be the rooms more continuously thought and read in during one
lifetime than this.

I have now to tell how it was reached from the house. You could hardly
have found the way to it, even had you set yourself seriously to the
task, without having in you a good share of the constructive faculty. The
whole was my uncle's contrivance, but might well have been supposed to
belong to the troubled times when a good hiding-place would have added to
the value of any home.

There was a large recess in the kitchen, of which the hearth, raised a
foot or so above the flagged floor, had filled the whole--a huge chimney
in fact, built out from the wall. At some later time an oblong space had
been cut out of the hearth to a level with the floor, and in it an iron
grate constructed for the more convenient burning of coal. Hence the
remnant of the raised hearth looked like wide hobs to the grate. The
recess as a chimney-corner was thereby spoiled, for coal makes a very
different kind of smoke from the aromatic product of wood or peat.

Right and left within the recess, were two common, unpainted doors, with
latches. If you opened either, you found an ordinary shallow cupboard,
that on the right filled with shelves and crockery, that on the left with
brooms and other household implements.