"No sooner had they heard it than they called back the magistrates
who had departed. These returned early in the morning and renewed
the search.

"They measured and sounded everywhere much more carefully than
before, especially in the chamber above mentioned, in order to
find out some hollow place. But finding nothing whatever during
the whole of the third day, they proposed on the morrow to strip
off the wainscot of that room.

"Meanwhile, they set guards in all the rooms about to watch all
night, lest I should escape. I heard from my hiding-place the
password which the captain of the band gave to his soldiers, and
I might have got off by using it, were it not that they would
have seen me issuing from my retreat, for there were two on guard
in the chapel where I got into my hiding-place, and several also
in the large wainscoted room which had been pointed out to them.

"But mark the wonderful Providence of God. Here was I in my
hiding-place. The way I got into it was by taking up the floor,
made of wood and bricks, under the fireplace. The place was so
constructed that a fire could not be lit in it without damaging
the house; though we made a point of keeping wood there, as if
it were meant for a fire.

"Well, the men on the night watch lit a fire in this very grate
and began chatting together close to it. Soon the bricks which
had not bricks but wood underneath them got loose, and nearly
fell out of their places as the wood gave way. On noticing this