"The panel of the wainscot upon which that mark had been worn was in effect a cross upon which a human heart had been tortured--and thought can, indeed, torture--for a third of a century. For Iden had learned to know himself, and despaired." Then the man falls asleep, and Amaryllis steals in on tiptoe to find a book. Then the wife, with a shawl round her shoulders, creeps outside the house and looks in at the window--angry with her unpractical husband. "Slight sounds, faint rustlings, began to be audible among the cinders in the fender. The dry cinders were pushed about by something passing between them. After a while a brown mouse peered out at the end of the fender under Iden's chair, looked round a moment, and went back to the grate. In a minute he came again, and ventured somewhat farther across the width of the white hearthstone to the verge of the carpet. This advance was made step by step, but on reaching the carpet the mouse rushed home to cover in one run--like children at 'touch wood,' going out from a place of safety very cautiously, returning swiftly. The next time another mouse followed, and a third appeared at the other end of the fender. By degrees they got under the table, and helped themselves to the crumbs; one mounted a chair and reached the cloth, but soon descended, afraid to stay there. Five or six mice were now busy at their dinner. "The sleeping man was as still and quiet as if carved. "A mouse came to the foot, clad in a great rusty-hued iron-shod boot--the foot that rested on the fender, for he had crossed his knees. His ragged and dingy trouser, full of March dust, and earth-stained by labour, was drawn up somewhat higher than the boot. It took the mouse several trials to reach the trouser, but he succeeded, and audaciously mounted to Iden's knee. Another quickly followed, and there the pair of them feasted on the crumbs of bread and cheese caught in the folds of his trousers. "One great brown hand was in his pocket, close to them--a mighty hand, beside which they were pigmies indeed in the land of the giants. What would have been the value of their lives between a finger and thumb that could crack a ripe and strong-shelled walnut? "The size--the mass--the weight of his hand alone was as a hill overshadowing them; his broad frame like the Alps; his head high above as a vast rock that overhung the valley. "His thumb-nail--widened by labour with spade and axe--his thumb-nail would have covered either of the tiny creatures as his shield covered Ajax. "Yet the little things fed in perfect confidence. He was so still, so _very_ still--quiescent--they feared him no more than they did the wall; they could not hear his breathing.