Meeking let this answer soak into the mentality of his hearers. Then he said quietly: "Will you tell us all about it, Dr. Pellery?" "Enough for your purpose," replied the witness. "You have there, I believe, a sectional drawing of the tower--give it to me. Now," he continued, holding up a sheet of stout paper and illustrating his remarks with the tip of his forefinger, "I will show you what I mean. St. Lawrence tower is eighty feet in height. It is divided into three sections. The lower section, the most considerable of the three, forms a western porch to the church itself, which is entered from it by a Norman arch. Above this is the middle section; above that the upper section, wherein are three ancient bells. The middle and upper sections are reached from the lower by a newel stair, set in the south-west angle of the tower. Now the middle section has for many centuries been a beamed and panelled chamber, from which the bells are rung, and wherein are stored a good many old things belonging to the church--chiefly in ancient chests. During the years that I lived in Hathelsborough I spent a great deal of time in this chamber--the then vicar of St. Lawrence, Mr. Goodbody, allowed me to examine anything I found stored there--it was amongst the muniments and registers of St. Lawrence, indeed, that I discovered a great deal of valuable information about the history of the town. Well, I have just said that this chamber, this middle section of the tower, is panelled; it is panelled from the oak flooring to within two feet of the oak beams in its ceiling, and the panelling, though it is probably four hundred years old, is in an excellent state of preservation. Now, about the middle of the last year that I spent in this town, I began to be very puzzled about the connecting wall between St. Lawrence tower and the Moot Hall. I saw no reason for making an arch at that point, and the wall had certainly not been built as a support, for the masonry of the tower and of the hall is unusually solid. I got the idea that that wall had originally been built as a means of communication between tower and hall; that it was hollow, and that there at each extremity there was a secret means of entrance and exit. I knew from experience that this sort of thing was common in Hathelsborough; the older part of the town is a veritable rabbit-warren! There is scarcely a house in the market-place, for instance, in which there is not a double staircase, the inner one being very cleverly concealed, and I know of several secret ways and passages, entered, say, on one side of a street and terminating far off on another. There is a secret underground way beneath the market-square which is entered at the Barbican in the Castle and terminates in St. Faith's chapel in St. Hathelswide's church; there is another, also underground, from St. Matthias's Hospital to the God's House in Cripple Lane. There are others--as I say, the old town is honeycombed. So there would be, of