He came to the priest hole, a capacious cell six feet square with a bench bed and a little table and chair. It had a small door upon the stairs that was open and a niche cupboard. Here he remained for a time. Then restlessness made him explore a cramped passage, he had to crawl along it for some yards, that came presently into a curious space with wood on one side and stone on the other. Then ahead, most blessed thing! he saw light. He went blundering toward it and then stopped appalled. From the other side of this wooden wall to the right of him had come a voice. “Come in!” said the voice. A rich masculine voice that seemed scarcely two yards away. Bealby became rigid. Then after a long interval he moved—as softly as he could. The voice soliloquized. Bealby listened intently, and then when all was still again crept forward two paces more towards the gleam. It was a peephole. The unseen speaker was walking about. Bealby listened, and the sound of his beating heart mingled with the pad, pad, of slippered footsteps. Then with a brilliant effort his eye was at the chink. All was still again. For a time he was perplexed by what he saw, a large pink shining dome, against a deep greenish grey background. At the base of the dome was a kind of interrupted hedge, brown and leafless.... Then he realized that he was looking at the top of a head and two enormous eyebrows. The rest was hidden.... Nature surprised Bealby into a penetrating sniff. “Now,” said the occupant of the room, and suddenly he was standing up—Bealby saw a long hairy neck sticking out of a dressing-gown—and walking to the side of the room. “I won’t stand it,” said the great voice, “I won’t stand it. Ape’s foolery!” Then the Lord Chancellor began rapping at the panelling about his apartment. “Hollow! It all sounds hollow.” Only after a long interval did he resume his writing.... All night long that rat behind the wainscot troubled the Lord Chancellor. Whenever he spoke, whenever he moved about, it was still; whenever he composed himself to write it began to rustle and blunder. Again and again it sniffed,—an annoying kind of sniff. At last the Lord Chancellor gave up his philosophical relaxation and went to bed, turned out the lights and attempted sleep, but this only intensified his sense of an uneasy, sniffing presence close to him. When the light was out it seemed to him that this Thing, whatever it was, instantly came into the room and set the floor creaking and snapping. A Thing perpetually attempting something and perpetually thwarted.... The Lord Chancellor did not sleep a wink. The first feeble infiltration of day found him sitting up in bed, wearily wrathful.... And now surely someone was going along the passage outside! A great desire to hurt somebody very much seized upon the Lord Chancellor. Perhaps he might hurt that dismal _farceur_ upon the landing! No doubt it was Douglas sneaking back to his own room after the night’s efforts.