This sudden turn of fortune rendered the conspirators for the moment speechless. Winter was the first to regain his balance.
"It shall be done," cried he; "right glad am I that such a chance hath come to us. Good Master Percy, bestir thyself, before another seize the opportunity."
To all, it seemed that the hand of God had opened a way for them, and Percy made haste to do his errand, and with such success, that ere another sunrise the room beneath the House of Lords was in the hands of those who hoped to overthrow the government.
Having gained so easily the place they had sought to acquire by stealth and painful labor, the conspirators at once set about conveying into it the powder now stored in the house of Master Ferrers. Fawkes, to whom this work fell, bought, and ordered deposited in the chamber, a goodly quantity of coals and faggots, so that one chancing to enter would note only a pile of such commodities as dealers in fuel collected for sale. Care was taken that the unfinished tunnel in the wall should be covered so that none would notice it. This was easily done by replacing a few of the outer stones and cementing them together.
Some days yet remained before the opening of Parliament; during that time Percy, Catesby, Winter and others of the conspirators, formed such plans as would be to their advantage when the kingdom, shaken to its center by the death of the King and his ministers, should be thrown into confusion. As for Fawkes, each day found him in the fatal cellar, where he studied the condition of his coals and faggots, making sure that no prying eye had penetrated the covering, under which was hidden the "devil's powder" awaiting the spark which would free English Catholics from James of Scotland and his Parliament.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE NOTE OF WARNING.
During the last week of October, sixteen hundred and five, near the day for the convening of Parliament, Lord Monteagle suddenly appeared in his house at Hoxton, from which he had been absent a month. His manner was perturbed and preoccupied in the extreme. Usually of a genial disposition, he surprised the servants who attended him, by an impatient order that supper be served at once, as he and the gentlemen accompanying him had already fasted too long.