rnaby Rudge with his mother and Grip, the raven, lived
unmolested in their little village and were happy.

At the end of the five years three things happened at about the same
time: Edward started back to England from the West Indies with a fair
fortune in his pocket; Joe was sent back from America with one arm gone,
and Barnaby and his mother left their village home again, secretly, and
set out for London, hoping to lose themselves in its hugeness. The wily
blind man, the companion now of Rudge, the murderer, had found them
out!

He came one day and made Mrs. Rudge give him all the money she had been
able to lay by in these five years except a single gold piece. He told
her he would return in a week for more and that if she had not got it
then, he would entice Barnaby away to join in the evil life of his
father. So she left the village the very next morning, and she and
Barnaby trudged afoot all the weary way to the great city.

Though they knew nothing of it, there was great excitement in London.
Lord George Gordon, a well-meaning but crack-brained nobleman, led
astray by flatterers till he believed he had a God-given mission to
drive all Catholics out of England, had, sometime before this, begun to
hold meetings and to stir up the people with the cry of "No Popery!"

He declared that the religion of the country was in danger of being
overthrown and that the Pope of Rome was plotting to make his religion
supreme. And this idea he talked wherever he went. He was a slender,
sallow man who dressed in severe black and wore his hair smoothly
combed, and his bright, restless eyes and his look of uncertainty made
it clear that he was no man to lead, but was rather himself the misled
dupe of others.

One of these schemers who ruled him was his secretary, Gashford, a man
of ugly face, with beetling brows and great flapped ears. He had been a
thief and a scoundrel all his life, and had wormed himself into Lord
George's confidence by flattery. He easily fooled his master into
believing that the rabble who flocked to hear him, and the idle loungers
who yelled themselves hoarse at what he said, were crowds of honest
citizens who believed as he did, and were ready to follow his
leadership. Gashford had added to his followers even Dennis, the hangman
of London, and the foolish nobleman not knowing the ruffian's true
calling, thought him a man to trust.

For many weeks this banding together of all the lawless ragamuffins of
Lo