Edward replied by an amused smile.
“You’ve a deal of book-learning, Father Garnet,” said he, “but under your leave, there’s a few things you don’t know in this world.”
He walked into the chimney-corner.
Chimneys, be it remembered, were much wider in the seventeenth century than they have been since the invention of grates. There was room in every chimney-corner, not only for the fire, but for one or two chairs and settles, where people could sit when they wished to warm themselves; and as there was no fire on Edward’s hearth, moving about on it was as easy as in a closet.
“Are we to fly up the chimney on a pair of broomsticks?” laughed Hall.
Edward only smiled again, and after a moment’s feeling with his hand among the bricks at the side of the chimney, they heard a sound as of the pushing back of bolts. Slowly, as if it moved with some difficulty, a square door opened in the chimney, so cleverly concealed that it required a skilful detective indeed to guess its existence. The door was of wood, “curiously covered over with brick, mortared and made fast” to it, “and coloured black like the other parts of the chimney, that very diligent inquiry might well have past by.” Behind it was a very small square recess, large enough to hold the two, though not sufficiently high for them to stand upright. A narrow tunnel, in outward appearance like a chimney, led up to the top of the house, designed for the admission of light and air to the hiding-place, but capable of conveying no great quantity of either. Having fetched a short ladder, Edward placed it in position, so that the priests could climb up into the chamber.
“It had been more to your comfort, Fathers, could we have cast forth some of this furniture,” he said, looking round it: “but it were scarce wise to defer the matter, the house being already invested.”
“Let be, we will serve ourselves of it as it is, and well.”
The priests mounted into the tiny hiding-place.
“See you, holy Fathers,” Edward asked, “a vessel of tin, standing below a little hole in the wall? Have a care that you move it not without you first stop the hole, for it runneth through into my mistress’s chamber, and by a quill or reed therein laid can she minister warm drinks unto you, as broths and caudle. She can likewise speak to you through the hole, and be heard: but if you hear the noise of feet or strange voices in that chamber, have a care to lie as squat (quiet) and close as ever you can. So may you safely hover (lie concealed); for the cleverest soldier of them all shall be hard put to it to find you here, if it please God.”