n informer. He declined to
admit his summer journey abroad, and would not allow that the spring
excursion had any other object than "to see the country and pass away
the time."

"What would you have done," asked the examiners, "with the Queen and the
royal issue?"

"If they had been there, I would not have helped them."

"If all had gone, who would have been published or elected King?"

"We never entered into that consideration."

"What form of government should have succeeded?"

"We were too few to enter into the consideration. The people themselves
would have drawn to a head." All this was untrue, as Fawkes
subsequently allowed. A number of arrests were made, mostly of innocent
persons. All in whose houses the conspirators had lodged. Mrs
Herbert, Mrs More, the tailor Patrick; Mrs Wyniard, Mrs Bright, and
their respective servants; Lord Northumberland's gentlemen, and the Earl
himself, were put under lock and key. The poor Earl bemoaned himself
bitterly, and entreated that Percy might be searched for--"who alone
could show him clear as the day, or dark as the night." He asserted
that Percy had obtained money from him by falsehood: and seeing how
exquisitely little value most of these worthy gentlemen seem to have set
upon truth, it was not at all unlikely. Lady Northumberland wrote an
impulsive letter to Lord Salisbury, entreating him to stand her friend
by "salving" her husband's reputation, "much wounded in the opinion of
the world by this wretched cousin": but the only result of the appeal
was to make the Lord Treasurer angry, and give rise to an intercession
in her behalf from her lord and master, who begs Salisbury to "bear with
her because she is a woman," and therefore "not able with fortitude to
bear out the crosses of the world as men are: and," adds the Earl
humorously, "she will sometimes have her own ways, let me do what I can,
which is not unknown to you." [Note 1.]

The prisoners were remanded, and the great metropolis slept: but there
was no sleep for those bemired and weary horsemen who pressed on that
night journey to Norbrook. Where Grant joined them is not recorded, but
Humphrey Littleton had left them at Dunchurch. His share in the plot
had been insignificant, but we shall hear of him again. Catesby, John
Wright, and Percy, who rode in front, beguiled their journey by a
discussion as to how they could procure fresh horses. They were
approaching Warwick, and it was proposed tha