At first Mark meditated upon bishops.  The perversity of night thoughts would not allow him to meditate upon the pictures of some child-loving bishop like St. Nicolas, but must needs fix his contemplation upon a certain Bishop of Bingen who was eaten by rats.  Mark could not remember why he was eaten by rats, but he could with dreadful distinctness remember that the prelate escaped to a castle on an island in the middle of the Rhine, and that the rats swam after him and swarmed in by every window until his castle was—­ugh!—­Mark tried to banish from his mind the picture of the wicked Bishop Hatto and the rats, millions of them, just going to eat him up.  Suppose a lot of rats came swarming up Notting Hill and unanimously turned to the right into Notting Dale and ate him?  An earthquake would be better than that.  Mark began to feel thoroughly frightened again; he wondered if he dared call out to his mother and put forward the theory that there actually was a rat in his room.  But he had promised her to be brave and unselfish, and . . . there was always the evening hymn to fall back upon.

Now the day is over, Night is drawing nigh, Shadows of the evening Steal across the sky.

Mark thought of a beautiful evening in the country as beheld in a Summer Number, more of an afternoon really than an evening, with trees making shadows right across a golden field, and spotted cows in the foreground.  It was a blissful and completely soothing picture while it lasted; but it soon died away, and he was back in the midway of a London night with icy stretches of sheet to right and left of him instead of golden fields.

    Now the darkness gathers,
      Stars begin to peep,
    Birds and beasts and flowers
      Soon will be asleep.

But rats did not sleep; they were at their worst and wake-fullest in the night time.

    Jesu, give the weary
      Calm and sweet repose,
    With thy tenderest blessing
      May mine eyelids close.

Mark waited a full five seconds in the hope that he need not finish the hymn; but when he found that he was not asleep after five seconds he resumed: 

    Grant to little children
      Visions bright of Thee;
    Guard the sailors tossing
      On the deep blue sea.

Mark envied the sailors.

    Comfort every sufferer
      Watching late in pain.

This was a most encouraging couplet.  Mark did not suppose that in the event of a great emergency—­he thanked Mrs. Ewing for that long and descriptive word—­the sufferers would be able to do much for him; but the consciousness that all round him in the great city they were lying awake at this moment was most helpful.  At this point he once more waited five seconds for sleep to arrive.  The next couplet was less encouraging, and he would have been glad to miss it out.