during
the whole of the third day, they proposed on the morrow to strip
off the wainscot of that room.

"Meanwhile, they set guards in all the rooms about to watch all
night, lest I should escape. I heard from my hiding-place the
password which the captain of the band gave to his soldiers, and
I might have got off by using it, were it not that they would
have seen me issuing from my retreat, for there were two on guard
in the chapel where I got into my hiding-place, and several also
in the large wainscoted room which had been pointed out to them.

"But mark the wonderful Providence of God. Here was I in my
hiding-place. The way I got into it was by taking up the floor,
made of wood and bricks, under the fireplace. The place was so
constructed that a fire could not be lit in it without damaging
the house; though we made a point of keeping wood there, as if
it were meant for a fire.

"Well, the men on the night watch lit a fire in this very grate
and began chatting together close to it. Soon the bricks which
had not bricks but wood underneath them got loose, and nearly
fell out of their places as the wood gave way. On noticing this
and probing the place with a stick, they found that the bottom
was made of wood, whereupon they remarked that this was something
curious. I thought that they were going there and then to break
open the place and enter, but they made up their minds at last
to put off further examination till next day.

"Next morning, therefore, they renewed the search most carefully,
everywhere except in the top chamber which served as a chapel,
and in which the two watchmen had made a fire over my head and
had noticed the strange make of the grate. God had blotted out
of their memory all remembrance of the thing. Nay, none of the
searchers entered the place the whole day, though it was the
one that was most open to suspicion, and if they had entered,
they would have found me without any search; rather, I should
say, they would have seen me, for the fire had burnt a great
hole in my hiding-place, and had I not got a little out of the
way, the hot embers would have fallen on me.

"The searchers, forgetting or not caring about this room, busied
themselves in ransacking the rooms below, in one of which I was
said to be. In fact, they found the other hiding-place which I
thought of going into, as I mentioned before. It was not far
off, so I could hear their shouts of joy when they first found
it. But after