Before going she expressed all sorts of kind wishes; and at the door
turned and said:

“And perhaps, sir, as the room is big and draughty it might be well to
have one of those big screens put round your bed at night—though, truth
to tell, I would die myself if I were to be so shut in with all kinds
of—of ‘things’, that put their heads round the sides, or over the top,
and look on me!” The image which she had called up was too much for her
nerves, and she fled incontinently. Mrs. Dempster sniffed in a superior manner as the landlady disappeared,
and remarked that for her own part she wasn’t afraid of all the bogies
in the kingdom. “I’ll tell you what it is, sir,” she said; “bogies is all kinds and
sorts of things—except bogies! Rats and mice, and beetles; and creaky
doors, and loose slates, and broken panes, and stiff drawer handles,
that stay out when you pull them and then fall down in the middle of
the night. Look at the wainscot of the room! It is old—hundreds of
years old! Do you think there’s no rats and beetles there! And do you
imagine, sir, that you won’t see none of them? Rats is bogies, I tell
you, and bogies is rats; and don’t you get to think anything else!”

“Mrs. Dempster,” said Malcolmson gravely, making her a polite bow, “you
know more than a Senior Wrangler! And let me say, that, as a mark of
esteem for your indubitable soundness of head and heart, I shall, when
I go, give you possession of this house, and let you stay here by
yourself for the last two months of my tenancy, for four weeks will
serve my purpose.”

“Thank you kindly, sir!” she answered, “but I couldn’t sleep away from
home a night. I am in Greenhow’s Charity, and if I slept a night away
from my rooms I should lose all I have got to live on. The rules is
very strict; and there’s too many watching for a vacancy for me to run
any risks in the matter. Only for that, sir, I’d gladly come here and
attend on you altogether during your stay.”

“My good woman,” said Malcolmson hastily, “I have come here on purpose
to obtain solitude; and believe me that I am grateful to the late
Greenhow for having so organised his admirable charity—whatever it
is—that I am perforce denied the opportunity of suffering from such a
form of temptation! Saint Anthony himself could not be more rigid on
the point!”

The old woman laughed harshly. “Ah, you young gentlemen,” she said,
“you don’t fear for naught; and belike you’ll get all the solitude you
want here.” She set to work with her cleaning; and by nightfall, when
Malcolmson returned from his walk—he always had one of his books to
study as he walked—he found the room swept and tidied, a fire burning
in the old hearth, the lamp lit, and the table spread for supper with
Mrs. Witham’s excellent fare. “This is comfort, indeed,” he said, as he
rubbed his hands. When he had finished his supper, and lifted the tray to the other end
of the great oak dining-table, he got out his books again, put fresh
wood on the fire, trimmed his lamp, and set himself down to a spell of
real hard work. He went on without pause till about eleven o’clock,
when he knocked off for a bit to fix his fire and lamp, and to make
himself a cup of tea. He had always been a tea-drinker, and during his
college life had sat late at work and had taken tea late. The rest was
a great luxury to him, and he enjoyed it with a sense of delicious,
voluptuous ease. The renewed fire leaped and sparkled, and threw quaint
shadows through the great old room; and as he sipped his hot tea he
revelled in the sense of isolation from his kind. Then it was that he
began to notice for the first time what a noise the rats were making. “Surely,” he thought, “they cannot have been at it all the time I was
reading. Had they been, I must have noticed it!” Presently, when the
noise increased, he satisfied himself that it was really new. It was
evident that at first the rats had been frightened at the presence of a
stranger, and the light of fire and lamp; but that as the time went on
they had grown bolder and were now disporting themselves as was their
wont. How busy they were! and hark to the strange noises! Up and down behind
the old wainscot, over the ceiling and under the floor they raced, and
gnawed, and scratched! Malcolmson smiled to himself as he recalled to
mind the saying of Mrs. Dempster, “Bogies is rats, and rats is bogies!”
The tea began to have its effect of intellectual and nervous stimulus,
he saw with joy another long spell of work to be done before the night
was past, and in the sense of security which it gave him, he allowed
himself the luxury of a good look round the room. He took his lamp in
one hand, and went all around, wondering that so quaint and beautiful
an old house had been so long neglected. The carving of the oak on the
panels of the wainscot was fine, and on and round the doors and windows
it was beautiful and of rare merit. There were some old pictures on the
walls, but they were coated so thick with dust and dirt that he could
not distinguish any detail of them, though he held his lamp as high as
he could over his head. Here and there as he went round he saw some
crack or hole blocked for a moment by the face of a rat with its bright
eyes glittering in the light, but in an instant it was gone, and a
squeak and a scamper followed. The thing that most struck him, however,
was the rope of the great alarm bell on the roof, which hung down in a
corner of the room on the right-hand side of the fireplace. He pulled
up close to the hearth a great high-backed carved oak chair, and sat
down to his last cup of tea. When this was done he made up the fire,
and went back to his work, sitting at the corner of the table, having
the fire to his left. For a little while the rats disturbed him
somewhat with their perpetual scampering, but he got accustomed to the
noise as one does to the ticking of a clock or to the roar of moving
water; and he became so immersed in his work that everything in the
world, except the problem which he was trying to solve, passed away
from him. He suddenly looked up, his problem was still unsolved, and there was in
the air that sense of the hour before the dawn, which is so dread to
doubtful life. The noise of the rats had ceased. Indeed it seemed to
him that it must have ceased but lately and that it was the sudden
cessation which had disturbed him. The fire had fallen low, but still
it threw out a deep red glow. As he looked he started in spite of his
_sang froid_. There on the great high-backed carved oak chair by the right side of
the fireplace sat an enormous rat, steadily glaring at him with baleful
eyes. He made a motion to it as though to hunt it away, but it did not
stir. Then he made the motion of throwing something. Still it did not
stir, but showed its great white teeth angrily, and its cruel eyes
shone in the lamplight with an added vindictiveness. Malcolmson felt amazed, and seizing the poker from the hearth ran at it
to kill it.