After that threat, and though he went then, and hid his hateful face--which already filled me with fear and repugnance beyond words--behind the curtain, where between bed and wall, there was a slender space, I had much ado to keep my seat and my self-control. In the silence which filled the room I could hear his breathing; and I felt sure that the searchers must hear it also when they entered. Assured that the Sancrofts and Kens, and the honest but misguided folk who followed them, did not carry pistols, I gave no credit to his statement that he was a Nonjuring parson; but deemed him some desperate highwayman or plotter, whose presence in my room, should he be discovered and should I by good luck escape his malice, would land me at the best in Bridewell or the Marshalsea. By-and-by the candle-wick grew long, and terrified at the prospect of being left in the dark with him, I went to snuff it. With a savage word he whispered me to let it be; after which I had no choice but to sit in fear and semi-darkness, listening to the banging of doors below, and the alternate rising and falling of voices, as the search party entered or issued from the successive rooms.
In my chamber with its four whitewashed walls and few sticks of furniture there was only one place where a man could stand and be unseen; and that was behind the curtain. There, I thought, the most heedless messenger must search; and as I listened to the steps ascending the last flight I was in an agony. I foresaw the moment when the constable would carelessly and perfunctorily draw the curtain--and then the flash, the report, the cry, the mad struggle up and down the room, which would follow.
So strong was this impression, that though I had been waiting minutes when the summons came and a hand struck my door, I could not at once find voice to speak. The latch was up, and the door half open when I cried "Enter!" and rose.
In the doorway appeared three or four faces, a couple of lanthorns, held high, and a gleam of pike-heads. "Richard Price, servant to Mr. Brome, the newswriter," cried one of the visitors, reading in a sonorous voice from a paper.
"Well affected," answered a second--evidently the person in command. "Brome is a good man. I know him. No one hidden here?"
"No," I said, with a loudness and boldness that surprised me.
"No lodger, my man?"
"None!"
"Right!" he answered. "Good-night, and God save King William!"
"Amen!" quoth I; and then, and not before, my knees began to shake.