Somehow I felt suddenly annoyed with him, though as a rule I could bear his rebukes without ill-feeling. It seemed so absurd to stick at such a trifle. What if the house was not mine! I hadn't been trained to the creed of _meum_ and _tuum_. And the challenge of a mystery to be solved was one that I couldn't refuse. Romance, adventure, this was my life-breath; and if there were pedants and landlords and other petty obstructions of authority to break through, so much the better. "I'm a fool, am I?" I said, and added stupidly, "Well, I think you're a coward." He stiffened, and turned on his heel; and my anger died down like a flame beneath a drench of water. "Worthing," I cried; but he walked on. And then I remembered how he had spent that night alone in the haunted room; and I had called him a coward.... I knew I had merely done so under that foolish impulse of self-justification which makes us whiten our own conduct by blackening that of those who oppose us. As he walked away I was in two minds whether to follow him or not. But my business was urgent, and I told myself I could easily unsay the silly word later on. So I pushed forward, and had soon forgotten the little tiff. I took precautions this time not to enter the grounds where I was likely to be seen, and I was soon among the ruins climbing up to the roof by a way I knew well through long experience. Then came the real obstacle, the wall of the false stack, high, smooth, and with no foothold, approached by a steep, slanting roof which would throw me to the ground far below if I slipped. And owing partly to the ruinous state of the house, and partly to its original disposition, this was the only way of reaching the stack in which I knew lay concealed the entrance to the secret chamber. I crawled out on to the sloping roof, keeping to the edge where I could get a certain purchase for my feet against the level eaves, and when under the stack I lay flat on my stomach and looked upward along the slates slanting away above me to the wall standing stiffly up beyond.