. I heartily congratulate you. And I would I were
twenty years younger myself...."

II

After supper that night the entire party went upstairs to the chapel.

Young Hugh Owen even already was beginning to be known among Catholics,
for his extraordinary skill in constructing hiding-holes. Up to the
present not much more had been attempted than little secret recesses
where the vessels of the altar and the vestments might be concealed. But
the young carpenter had been ingenious enough in two or three houses to
which he had been called, to enlarge these so considerably that even two
or three men might be sheltered in them; and, now that it seemed as if
the persecution of recusants was to break out again, the idea began to
spread. Mr. John FitzHerbert while in London had heard of his skill, and
had taken means to get at the young man, for his own house at Padley.

* * * * *

Owen was already at work when the party came upstairs. He had supped
alone, and, with a servant to guide him, had made the round of the
house, taking measurements in every possible place. He was seated on the
floor as they came in; three or four panels lay on the ground beside
him, and a heap of plaster and stones.

He looked up as they came in.

"This will take me all night, sir," he said. "And the fire must be put
out below."

He explained his plan. The old hiding-place was but a poor affair; it
consisted of a space large enough for only one man, and was contrived by
a section of the wall having been removed, all but the outer row of
stones made thin for the purpose; the entrance to it was through a tall
sliding panel on the inside of the chapel. Its extreme weakness as a
hiding-hole lay in the fact that anyone striking on the panel could not
fail to hear how hollow it rang. This he proposed to do away with,
unless, indeed, he left a small space for the altar vessels; and to
construct instead a little chamber in the chimney of the hall that was
built against this wall; he would contrive it so that an entrance was
still from the chapel, as well as one that he would make over the hearth
below; and that the smoke should be conducted round the little enclosed
space, passing afterwards up the usual vent. The chamber would be large
enough, he thought, for at least two men. He explained, too, his method
of deadening the hollowness of the sound if the panel were knocked upon,
by placing pads of felt on struts of wood t