“They spent two days in this work without finding anything.  Thinking therefore that I had gone on Easter Sunday, the two magistrates went away on the second day, leaving the pursuivants to take the mistress of the house and all her Catholic servants of both sexes to London to be examined and imprisoned.  They meant to leave some who were not Catholics to keep the house, the traitor (one of the servants of the house) being one of them.

“The good lady was pleased at this, for she hoped that he would be the means of freeing me and rescuing me from death; for she knew that I had made up my mind to suffer and die of starvation between two walls, rather than come forth and save my own life at the expense of others.

“In fact, during those four days that I lay hid I had nothing to eat but a biscuit or two and a little quince jelly, which my hostess had at hand and gave me as I was going in.

“She did not look for any more, as she supposed that the search would not last beyond a day.  But now that two days were gone and she was to be carried off on the third with all her trusty servants, she began to be afraid of my dying of sheer hunger.  She bethought herself then of the traitor who she heard was to be left behind.  He had made a great fuss and show of eagerness in withstanding the searchers when they first forced their way in.  For all that she would not have let him know of the hiding-places, had she not been in such straits.  Thinking it better, however, to rescue me from certain death, even at some risk to herself, she charged him, when she was taken away and everyone had gone, to go into a certain room, call me by my wonted name, and tell me that the others had been taken to prison, but that he was left to deliver me.  I would then answer, she said, from behind the lath and plaster where I lay concealed.  The traitor promised to obey faithfully; but he was faithful only to the faithless, for he unfolded the whole matter to the ruffians who had remained behind.

“No sooner had they heard it than they called back the magistrates who had departed.  These returned early in the morning and renewed the search.

“They measured and sounded everywhere much more carefully than before, especially in the chamber above mentioned, in order to find out some hollow place.  But finding nothing whatever 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.