ut up the very roots, and remove all impediments whatsoever."

"That were to run great risk and accomplish little," added Catesby.
"No, Tom: thou shalt not adventure thyself to so small purpose. If thou
wilt be a traitor, I have in mine head a much further design than
that,--to greater advantage, and that can never be discovered."

Every body wished to know his meaning.

"I have bethought me," continued Catesby, "of a way at one instant to
deliver us from all our bonds, and without any foreign help to replant
again the Catholic religion. In a word, it is to blow up the Parliament
House with gunpowder, for in that place have they done us all the
mischief, and perchance God hath designed that place for their
punishment."

"Truly, a strange proposal!" said Thomas Winter. "The scandal would be
so great that the Catholic religion might sustain thereby."

"The nature of the disease requires so sharp a remedy," was Catesby's
reply.

"But were it lawful?" objected John Wright. "Ask your ghostly father,"
said Catesby, who was pretty sure of the answer in that case.

"But remember," said Winter, "there are many of our friends and Catholic
brethren amongst the Lords: shall we destroy them with the rest?"

Catesby's answer was in principle that of Caiaphas. "Ay: 'tis expedient
the few die for the good of the many."

The next step was to obtain a house convenient for their operations,--
namely, so close to the Houses of Parliament that they could carry a
mine from its cellar right under the House. Percy was deputed to attend
to this matter, as his circumstances offered an excuse for his seeking
such a house. He was one of the band of gentlemen pensioners, whose
duty it was to be in daily attendance on the King; a position into which
he had been smuggled by his cousin Lord Northumberland, without having
taken the oath requisite for _it_. This oath Percy could not
conscientiously have taken, since by it he renounced the authority of
the Pope. A little study of the topography induced him to fix on two
contiguous houses, which stood close to the House of Lords. On
investigation, it was found that these two houses belonged to the
Parliament, and were held by Mr Wyniard, Keeper of the King's Wardrobe,
"an ancient and honest servant of Queen Elizabeth." Both, however, had
been sub-let by him--the nearer to Mr Henry Ferris; the further to
Gideon Gibbons, a public porter, subsequently utilised by the plotters,
to his dan