ot yet spoken. After the thing you wot of is done,
what then shall follow? If not the King alone be present there, but the
Queen also, and maybe the Prince--"

"If they be, we will not save them," interjected Fawkes.

"We need not," coolly responded Catesby: "but if all be gone, who then
shall be published or elected king?"

"Why, we have never entered into that consideration," said Grant,
dubiously.

"Had we not best enter into it? Our plans must be ready at once, when
the time comes, not all hanging betwixt the eyelids." [i.e. in
uncertainty.]

"The Queen and Prince are safe to be there," said Percy. "And in any
case, the Prince were best away; for if all be true that is said, or the
half thereof, he were like to do us more mischief than his father. He
is not of the King's humour, but more like old Bess--hath a will of his
own, and was bred up strictly Protestant."

"Bad, that!" said Catesby. "Then the Prince must go."

"'Tis pity, though," observed Robert Winter. "A bright little lad."

Catesby laughed scornfully. "Come now, Robin, no sensibility
[susceptibility, sentimentality], I beg! We cannot afford to be
punctual [particular] in this affair. There are bright lads by the
dozen everywhere, as cheap as blackberries. Now, what of the little
Duke?"

The man who spoke thus was himself the father of two boys.

"He'll not be much of aught at five years old," said Winter. "Mr
Percy, you were the most like of any of us to win him into your hands."

Percy, as one of the band of gentleman pensioners, whose duty it was to
wait on the King, had opportunities of access to the little Prince,
beyond any of his accomplices.

"I will undertake that," said Percy eagerly.

"Do we concur, then, to elect him King?" asked Catesby.

"Hold, good gentlemen! by your leave, we go something too fast," said
Fawkes. "How if Mr Percy be unable--as may be--to win Duke Charles
into his hands?"

"Why, then comes the Lady Elizabeth," said Winter.

"What say you to the only English-born of the royal issue--the Lady
Mary? She, at least, is uninfect with heresy."

There was a laugh at this suggestion: for the Princess Mary was not
quite five months old.

"Very well, if we could win her," answered Catesby: "but she would be
hard to come by. No--the one easiest had, and as likely as any to serve
our turn, is the young lady at Combe. Let the memory of Elizabeth the
heretic, so dear to the hearts of Englishmen, be e