Next morning when the little imps came for orders as usual, after
prayers, he took them down into the cellar, and pointing out the hole
in the ceiling, he said to them:
'My friends, this little hole is a mystery. It communicates, I
believe, with the chapel; but I cannot find the exit. All I know is,
that some pious person or angel, or what not, desirous to do good,
slips into it every day whatever he thinks may be a cause of evil in
the neighbourhood, hoping thus to destroy it' (in proof of which
statement he showed them a scattered heap of newspapers on the floor
of the cellar beneath the hole). 'And the best thing you can do,' he
added, 'is to stay here and take them away as far as they come down
and put them back into circulation again. Tut! tut!' he added, picking
up a moneylender's threatening letter to a widow, 'it is astonishing
how these people interfere with the most sacred rights! Here is a
letter actually stolen from the post! Pray see that it is delivered.'
So he left the little imps at work, and fed them from above with all
manner of evil-doing things, which they as promptly drew into the
cellar, and at intervals flew away with, to put them into circulation
again.
That evening, at about half-past eleven, the Devil came to fetch the
Learned Man, and found him seated at his fine great desk, writing. The
Learned Man got up very affably to receive the Devil, and offered him
a chair by the fire, just near the little round hole.
'Pray don't move,' said the Devil; 'I came early on purpose not to
disturb you.'
'You are very good,' replied the Learned Man. 'The fact is, I have to
finish my report on Lady Grope's Settlement among our Poor in the Bull
Ring - it is making some progress. But their condition is
heart-breaking, my dear sir; heart-breaking!'
'I can well believe it,' said the Devil sadly and solemnly, leaning
back in his chair, and pressing his hands together like a roof. 'The
poor in our great towns, Sir Charles' (for the Learned Man had been
made a Baronet), 'the condition, I say, of the - Don't I feel a
draught?' he added abruptly. For the Devil can't bear draughts.
'Why,' said the Learned Man, as though ashamed, 'just near your chair
there _is_ a little hole that I have done my best to fill up, but
somehow it seemed impossible to fill it... I don't know...'
The Devil hates excuses, and is above all practical, so he just
whipped the soul of a lawyer out of his side-pocket, tied a knot in it
to stiffen it, and shoved it into the hole.
