"They stuck to their purpose, however, of stripping off all the
wainscot of the other large room. So they set a man to work near
the ceiling, close to the place where I was: for the lower part
of the walls was covered with tapestry, not with wainscot. So
they stripped off the wainscot all round till they came again
to the very place where I lay, and there they lost heart and
gave up the search.

"My hiding-place was in a thick wall of the chimney behind a
finely inlaid and carved mantelpiece. They could not well take
the carving down without risk of breaking it. Broken, however,
it would have been, and that into a thousand pieces, had they
any conception that I could be concealed behind it. But knowing
that there were two flues, they did not think that there could
be room enough there for a man.

"Nay, before this, on the second day of the search, they had
gone into the room above, and tried the fireplace through which
I had got into my hole. They then got into the chimney by a ladder
to sound with their hammers. One said to another in my hearing,
'Might there not be a place here for a person to get down into
the wall of the chimney below by lifting up this hearth?' 'No,'
answered one of the pursuivants, whose voice I knew, 'you could
not get down that way into the chimney underneath, but there
might easily be an entrance at the back of this chimney.' So
saying he gave the place a knock. I was afraid that he would hear
the hollow sound of the hole where I was.

"Seeing that their toil availed them nought, they thought that
I had escaped somehow, and so they went away at the end of the