might have brought something bigger.'
He felt in his left-hand trouser pocket, and fished out a pedant,
crumpled him carefully into a ball, and stuffed him hard into the
hole, so that he suffered agonies. Then the Devil watched carefully.
The soul of the pedant was at first tugged as if from below, then
drawn slowly down, and finally shot off out of sight.

'This is a most extraordinary thing!' said the Devil.

'It is the draught. It is very strong between the joists,' ventured
the Learned Man.

'Fiddle-sticks ends!' shouted the Devil. 'It is a trick! But I've
never been caught yet, and I never will be.'

He clapped his hands, and a whole host of his followers poured in
through the windows with mortgages, Acts of Parliament, legal
decisions, declarations of war, charters to universities, patents for
medicines, naturalization orders, shares in gold mines,
specifications, prospectuses, water companies' reports, publishers'
agreements, letters patent, freedoms of cities, and, in a word, all
that the Devil controls in the way of hole-stopping rubbish; and the
Devil, kneeling on the floor, stuffed them into the hole like a
madman. But as fast as he stuffed, the little imps below (who had
summoned a number of their kind to their aid also) pulled it through
and carted it away. And the Devil, like one possessed, lashed the
floor with his tail, and his eyes glared like coals of fire, and the
sweat ran down his face, and he breathed hard, and pushed every
imaginable thing he had into the hole so swiftly that at last his
documents and parchments looked like streaks and flashes. But the
loyal little imps, not to be beaten, drew them through into the cellar
as fast as machinery, and whirled them to their assistants; and all
the poor lost souls who had been pressed into the service were
groaning that their one holiday in the year was being filched from
them, when, just as the process was going on so fast that it roared
like a printing-machine in full blast, the clock in the hall struck
twelve.

The Devil suddenly stopped and stood up.

'Out of my house,' said the Learned Man; 'out of my house! I've had
enough of you, and I've no time for fiddle-faddle! It's past twelve,
and I've won!'

The Devil, though still panting, smiled a diabolical smile, and
pulling out his repeater (which he had taken as a perquisite from the
body of a member of Parliament), said, 'I suppose you keep Greenwich
time?'

'Certainly!' said Sir Charles