t all the guns, fired up into the air round old Guy, with
tremendous shouts. But that was not all. In the evening the huge bonfire
twenty feet high down on the Common, for which all the men and boys had
been begging "bavins" or cutting furze for days, was lighted. And round
it every one in the parish assembled.

Ah! the delights of Bonfire Night! the thrill of excitement as the
match was applied to a heap of well-dried sticks and straw in a
sheltered hole on the leeward side. The yells of joy as the furze caught
and crackled as only furze can crackle, and the flames ran up the sides
of the stack and lit up Guy Fawkes, whose effigy, after going the rounds
of the parish, was at length deposited on the top of the bonfire; the
cloud of sparks that streamed out from the cracking, snapping pile; the
squibs and crackers that every body threw at every body else; and then
the climax, when the fire reached old Guy himself, and with a mighty
heave the old fellow sank into his fiery grave in the centre of the
bonfire, the squibs in his hat exploding like a round of musketry, and a
roar rose from the good Hampshire throats as the whole burning mass
collapsed while the flames rushed up fiercely with one last effort high
into the foggy air. Then the good-nights, and the walk home, our hair
and clothes smelling of smoke, and our eyes so dazzled that we stumbled
and staggered along across the Common, while the shouts of the boys,
dancing about the embers of the great fire, gradually died away in the
distance.

What can all this have to do with Prince Henry you may ask?

A great deal, we answer. For these bonfires all over England on the
Fifth of November, commemorate an event in James the First's reign which
had a great effect on our young hero's mind.

Certain persons in England, who hated King James for his hard treatment
of the Roman Catholic party, resolved to take the law into their own
hands. They thought that if the king, Prince Henry, and the Parliament
could be destroyed at one blow, they might take possession of Prince
Charles and Princess Elizabeth, bring about a revolution and put the
government into the hands of the Roman Catholics who would be helped by
Spain. Robert Catesby was the chief of the conspirators; and for
eighteen months he and a small band of desperate men worked in the
utmost secrecy at their hideous scheme. The day chosen for its
accomplishment was the fifth of November, 1605, the day on which
Parliament