which was only
undertaken "to see the country, and to pass away the time." When he went,
he locked up the powder and took the key with him, and "one Gibbons'
wife, who dwells thereby, had the charge of the residue of the house."

Such is that part of the story told by Fawkes which concerns us at
present. It is obvious that Fawkes, who, as subsequent experience shows,
was no coward, had made up his mind to shield as far as possible his
confederates, and to take the whole of the blame upon himself. He says,
for instance, that Percy had only lain in the house for three or four
days before Easter, 1605, a statement, as subsequent evidence proved,
quite untrue; he pretends not to know, except from rumor and the
preparation of the barge, that the King was coming to the House of Lords
on the 5th, a statement almost certainly untrue. In order not to
criminate others, and especially any priest, he denies having taken the
sacrament on his promise, which is also untrue.

What is more noticeable is that he makes no mention of the mine, about
which so much was afterward heard, evidently--so at least I read the
evidence--because he did not wish to bring upon the stage those who had
worked at it. If indeed the passage which I have placed in square
brackets be accepted as evidence, Fawkes did more than keep silence upon
the mine. He must have made a positive assertion--soon afterward found to
be untrue--that the cellar was hired several months before it really was.
This passage is, however, inserted in a different hand from the rest of
the document. My own belief is that it gives a correct account of a
statement made by the prisoner, but omitted by the clerk who made the
copy for Coke, and inserted by some other person. Nobody that I can think
of had the slightest interest in adding the words, while they are just
what Fawkes might be expected to say if he wanted to lead his examiners
off the scent. At all events, even if these words be left out of account,
it must be admitted that Fawkes said nothing about the existence of a
mine.

Though Fawkes kept silence as to the mine, he did not keep silence on the
desperate character of the work on which he had been engaged. "And," runs
the record, "he confesseth that when the King had come to the Parliament
House this present day, and the Upper House had been sitting, he meant to
have fired the match and have fled for his own safety before the powder
had taken fire, and confesseth that, if he