Talmudo B’Yado:
The same sefer relates that the Maharsha learned Torah day and night. Since he loved Torah so much, he did not want to doze off for a moment, and he would stay up all night learning.
The only night that he did not learn was on the night of “Nittel”. On this night, he would make a reckoning of all of his finances so that he would know how much to give to maaser.
One year, there was a sinful person who lived in the city of Ostroha who disliked the Maharsha. This man went to the authorities and made up a libel against the Maharsha, falsely claiming that he had cursed the Christian religion. As proof, he related that the Maharsha would not learn Torah on the night of Nittel because he believed that this night was impure.
The Maharsha, who was unaware of any of this, sat down that Nittel night and started to make his financial calculations. Suddenly, while he was writing, a sefer fell off his bookshelf and landed on the floor. The Maharsha quickly picked it up, kissed it and put it back in its place. However, another sefer then fell from the shelf and landed on the ground.
The Maharsha again bent down to puck it up, but the same thing then happened a third time. The Maharsha realized that this was not a coincidence. He opened the sefer and looked into it, as if he were studying it, and, at that exact moment, the door was forced open and a group of policemen rushed in, with the informer at their lead.
When they saw the Maharsha learning from a sefer, they turned around and left, and the informers plan went to naught.
