and probing the place with a stick, they found that the bottom
was made of wood, whereupon they remarked that this was something
curious. I thought that they were going there and then to break
open the place and enter, but they made up their minds at last
to put off further examination till next day.

"Next morning, therefore, they renewed the search most carefully,
everywhere except in the top chamber which served as a chapel,
and in which the two watchmen had made a fire over my head and
had noticed the strange make of the grate. God had blotted out
of their memory all remembrance of the thing. Nay, none of the
searchers entered the place the whole day, though it was the
one that was most open to suspicion, and if they had entered,
they would have found me without any search; rather, I should
say, they would have seen me, for the fire had burnt a great
hole in my hiding-place, and had I not got a little out of the
way, the hot embers would have fallen on me.

"The searchers, forgetting or not caring about this room, busied
themselves in ransacking the rooms below, in one of which I was
said to be. In fact, they found the other hiding-place which I
thought of going into, as I mentioned before. It was not far
off, so I could hear their shouts of joy when they first found
it. But after joy comes grief; and so it was with them. The only
thing that they found was a goodly store of provision laid up.
Hence they may have thought that this was the place that the
mistress of the house meant; in fact, an answer might have been
given from it to the call of a person in the room mentioned by
her.