than
dreaming, yet with his thought held captive by sleep.

He reached for his matchbox and struck a light. . . . The whole world
was after him, hunting him down, tearing down the house above his
head! . . . Well, he would go down with the house. Pamphlett, or
Government, might take his house: but there was the old
hiding-cupboard to the right of the chimney-breast. . . .

When they summoned him to-morrow, he would have vanished.
Only by uncovering his last shelter should they discover what was
left of him. He would perish with the house.

He lit the candle and carried it to the cupboard; opened this, and
peered into the well at his feet: lifted one of the loose
bottom-boards, and, holding himself steady by a grip on the scurtain,
thrust a naked leg down, feeling into vacancy.

The ball of his foot touched some substance, hard and apparently
firm. He supposed it to be a lower ceiling of the hole, and, after
pressing once or twice to make sure, put all his weight upon it.

With a creak and a rush of masonry the whole second flooring of the
cupboard gave way beneath him, leaving his invalid leg dangling, in
excruciating pain. But that the crook of his elbow caught across the
scurtain (shooting darts as of fire up the jarred funny-bone), he had
made a part of the avalanche, the noise of which was enough to wake
the dead. Luckily, too, he had set his candle on the planching
floor, just wide of the cupboard entrance, and it stood burning as
though nothing had happened.

With pain which surely must be worse than any pain of death, he
heaved himself back and on to the bedroom floor again. The cascade
of plaster, timber, masonry, must (he judged) have shot itself
straight down into his parlour below.

He picked up the candle, and warily--while his leg wrung him with
torture at every step--crept down the stairs to explore.

The parlour door opened inwards. He thrust it open for a short way
quite easily. Then of a sudden it jammed: but it left an aperture
through which he could squeeze himself. He did so, and held the
candle aloft.

While he stared, first at a hole in the ceiling, then at the "scree"
which had broken through it and lay spread, fan-shaped, on the solid
floor at his feet, he heard a footstep, and Mrs Penhaligon's voice in
the passage without.

"Mr Nanjivell! Is that Mr Nanjivell?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Oh, what has happened?"

"Nothing, ma'am. Only a downrush of soot in the chimney," answere