study as he walked--he found the room swept and tidied, a fire burning
in the old hearth, the lamp lit, and the table spread for supper with
Mrs. Witham's excellent fare. 'This is comfort, indeed,' he said, as he
rubbed his hands.

When he had finished his supper, and lifted the tray to the other end of
the great oak dining-table, he got out his books again, put fresh wood
on the fire, trimmed his lamp, and set himself down to a spell of real
hard work. He went on without pause till about eleven o'clock, when he
knocked off for a bit to fix his fire and lamp, and to make himself a
cup of tea. He had always been a tea-drinker, and during his college
life had sat late at work and had taken tea late. The rest was a great
luxury to him, and he enjoyed it with a sense of delicious, voluptuous
ease. The renewed fire leaped and sparkled, and threw quaint shadows
through the great old room; and as he sipped his hot tea he revelled in
the sense of isolation from his kind. Then it was that he began to
notice for the first time what a noise the rats were making.

'Surely,' he thought, 'they cannot have been at it all the time I was
reading. Had they been, I must have noticed it!' Presently, when the
noise increased, he satisfied himself that it was really new. It was
evident that at first the rats had been frightened at the presence of a
stranger, and the light of fire and lamp; but that as the time went on
they had grown bolder and were now disporting themselves as was their
wont.

How busy they were! and hark to the strange noises! Up and down behind
the old wainscot, over the ceiling and under the floor they raced, and
gnawed, and scratched! Malcolmson smiled to himself as he recalled to
mind the saying of Mrs. Dempster, 'Bogies is rats, and rats is bogies!'