There is no need to tell anyone who lives in the country what happens on the fifth of November, for they are sure to know well. The beautiful fireworks, with their streams of coloured fire; the crackling of the squibs; the gorgeous catherine-wheels and the coloured Roman candles; the great rockets that shoot up into the air with a swish, leaving behind them a long tail of golden fire, and then burst into showers of stars—all these may be seen on the fifth of November; and if you are really lucky children, there will follow the great bonfire, with barrels of tar poured over it to make the flames roar upward. They lick the bare sticks put ready for them, and climb over the logs until they reach the figure of Guy Fawkes himself, a stuffed figure like a scarecrow, which stands at the highest point. The flames crackle gaily; the heat is in contrast with the fresh air of the November evening; all the people standing by look strange and unlike themselves with that weird glow on their faces. Then Guy's hands curl up, an arm wavers, and he topples headlong into the glowing flames, to be burnt up altogether. Guy is only made of straw, so we need not be sorry for him; but it is a curious custom, and we have to go to history to find out what it means. That there was a real man, a Guy Fawkes, who lived in James I.'s reign, you know perhaps. This Guy was at first a Protestant, and as a little boy used to go to church with his mother; but as he grew older he became a Roman Catholic. Now, at that time in England there were many very hard and unjust laws against the Roman Catholics, not allowing them to hold offices in the State, and preventing them from doing many things that Protestants might do. People are wiser now, and realize that a man may be a good man and a good servant of the country whatever his religion so long as he is in earnest, but in those days it was not so. Well, a certain number of lords and gentlemen who were Roman Catholics tried to get these laws altered; but they could not, and so they were very angry and bitter against the King and his Ministers, and joined together to make a plot to be revenged on them. Guy Fawkes was one of the men in this plot, and it may have been he who suggested the dreadful idea that was at last decided upon. However that may be, at first nothing was done, but the conspirators used to meet together in secret to talk things over. They dare not meet openly, for if so many Catholic gentlemen had been discovered together, the King and his Ministers would have suspected something wrong. In one great house in the country belonging to a young man called Sir Everard Digby, they met in a secret room, with a floor that moved, so that if ever the King's officers came suddenly to surprise them there, they could all escape by means of the floor, which slipped up and let them out, whence they could go from the house by means of a secret passage. Digby was quite young, little more than a boy, and he had just married a young and beautiful girl, when he became entangled in the detestable Gunpowder Plot.

The plot, when it finally took form, was that the conspirators should hire a house near to the Houses of Parliament and dig an underground tunnel, which should reach right beneath the part of the House where the King would be when the Houses of Parliament were opened the next time; that they should then put gunpowder there, and blow up the whole building, killing the King and many of the great Ministers. While everyone was thrown into terror and confusion by this, the other conspirators were to seize one of the young princes, the King's sons, and carry him off; then, when everything was thus in the hands of the Catholics, they expected to be able to make their own terms, and get the laws against Catholics repealed by the nation.

All this sounded very grand, but it was very difficult to do. It is wonderful that the conspirators managed to do so much as they did. They actually took a room near the Houses of Parliament, and began to dig their underground passage. But they found this a much more difficult job than they had anticipated, for every bit of the soil they dug out had to be carried away in baskets secretly by night; for people would naturally have noticed it if they had seen it, and begun to ask what was being done. But just when they had discovered how hard the work was going to be, they heard that a cellar right under the Houses of Parliament was to be let. Here was a chance! They took it at once, and gave up digging out their tunnel. Guy Fawkes was appointed to see that the scheme was carried out, and his was the dangerous part. He had to buy barrels of gunpowder singly and at different times, and see that they were carried into his cellar without anyone seeing them. Then he bought a great deal of wood in faggots and stacked it over the barrels of gunpowder, so that if anyone did come into that cellar, he would never suspect it was anything but an ordinary cellar for storing wood. The meeting of Parliament was to take place in October, and by August all was ready; then the meeting of Parliament was delayed, and the conspirators heard it was not to be until the fifth of November. The time now drew very near. Then it occurred to some of the conspirators that perhaps some of their own friends who were members of Parliament would be blown up with the rest, and they grew uneasy. Each one wanted to warn his own friend not to go to Parliament that day, but no one knew how to do it for fear of betraying the plot. At last, however, one of the conspirators, who was a brother-in-law of Lord Mounteagle's, sent Lord Mounteagle a letter, saying that he had better not go to Parliament on the day of opening, for the Parliament was to receive 'a terrible blow, and yet shall not see who hurts them.' Lord Mounteagle was naturally distressed to receive such a letter, without any sign who had sent it, and he took it to the King. James was a clever man in some ways, and he saw at once that a terrible blow, yet not seen, must mean something to do with gunpowder; so he had the cellars under the Houses of Parliament searched, and discovered the barrels of gunpowder. Now Guy Fawkes knew nothing of this, but came the night before the fifth to be in time to do his dreadful deed. He was a brave man, though a wicked one, caring little what evil he was doing. He had arranged a train of gunpowder running along the floor to what is called a slow match—that is to say, a long match that burns for perhaps five or ten minutes, so that the person who lights it has time to get away before the explosion occurs—and then he waited until the time when all the members of Parliament and the King should be there before setting a light to it. Cannot you picture Guy Fawkes alone in that gloomy cellar that night? He did not know that the plot was discovered; he thought that everything had been kept very secret, and that to-morrow he would set a light to that match and hurry away, and before he had got very far he would hear a sound that would seem to tear the very sky, and with a crash the Houses of Parliament would reel and fall, burying in their ruins hundreds of men and the King of England. These were not the same Houses of Parliament that stand now, but were burnt down many years after.

In the dark shadows Guy waited; perhaps a mouse ran across the floor, and made him start. And then there was a sound of footsteps at the door, a whispering and a creaking of boots, and before he had time to do anything he found himself surrounded by soldiers, and knew that all was over; that the least he could hope for was death, which he had richly deserved, for he had intended to murder hundreds of men who had never wronged him.

All the implements for his terrible scheme were found upon him—the slow match and the lights, and when the faggots were thrown aside there were the barrels of gunpowder. If the people could have got at Guy Fawkes, he would have been torn in pieces; but he was kept from them by the soldiers, and hurried off to the Tower. So all the people could do was to make a false Guy Fawkes stuffed with straw and burn him on a bonfire, and that is the origin of our fifth of November.

Guy Fawkes was not put to death at once, as you will hear in the account of the Tower; he was tortured on the rack to make him give up the names of those who had been in the conspiracy with him. Again and again he refused, but at last the awful suffering weakened him so that he hardly knew what he was doing; and when the torturers told him some of his comrades had been taken, which was not true, he believed them, and moaned out the names of two or three of his fellow-conspirators. Among them was poor young Sir Everard Digby, who, when he heard that all was lost, mounted his horse and tried to get away to the sea to go across to the Continent; but he was taken, and with many of the others, including Guy Fawkes himself, was hanged.

This, then, was the famous Gunpowder Plot which we celebrate on the fifth of November.