Read it through once

‘One night when I was sleeping in a room which opens on to the corridor, I heard some one tapping. So frightened was I that for the whole of the rest of the night I lay dead still on my bed, scarcely daring to breathe. Next morning came the following poem from His Excellency: “More patient than the water-rail that taps upon the tree-root all night long, in vain I loitered on the threshold of your inhospitable room.” To this I answered: “So great was your persistence that for a water-rail I did indeed mistake you; and lucky am I to have made this merciful mistake.”’[8]