Without following the story in its relation to the horrors of the Gordon Riots, we record in passing that both Maypole Hugh and Barnaby joined the throng on leaving their cosy quarters of the inn. Passing over the frequent visits of such characters as Mr., Mrs. and Dolly Varden, Miss Haredale and others, we reach the stage in the story when the rioters arrived at the inn on their way to burn and raid the Warren in the neighbourhood. They encounter John Willet at the Porch, and immediately demand drink. Their ringleader was no other than Maypole Hugh, who confronted his late master with "These lads are thirsty and must drink. Bustle, Jack, bustle! Show us the best--the very best--the over-proof that you keep for your own drinking, Jack!" Then ensued a mad scene. The rabble entered the bar--"the sanctuary, the mystery, the hallowed ground: here it was, crammed with men, clubs, sticks, torches, pistols; filled with a deafening noise, oaths, shouts, screams, hootings; changed all at once into a bear-garden, a madhouse, an infernal temple; men darting in and out, by door and window, smashing the glass, turning the taps, drinking liquor out of china punch-bowls, sitting astride of casks, smoking private and personal pipes, cutting down the sacred grove of lemons, hacking and hewing of the celebrated cheese ... noise, smoke, light, darkness, frolic, anger, laughter, groans, plunder, fear, and ruin." Finally binding John to a chair they left him alone in his dismantled bar and made for the Warren, which they burned to the ground. In despair, Mr. Haredale seeks his niece and servants at the Maypole, only to find the spectacle of John Willet in the ignominious position the rioters left him, with his favourite house stripped and pulled about his ears. Damaged as the "Maypole" was in many ways, it never actually drops out of the story's interest; but during the trend of events in London we naturally hear little of it. John Willet had flown in despair from it, and took up his abode in the Black Lion in London for safety's sake, where eventually he again met his son Joe, now a one-armed hero back from the wars. Here in his solitude we find him sitting over the fire, "afar off in the remotest depths of his intellect," with a lurking hint or faint suggestion "that out of the public purse there might issue funds for the restoration of the Maypole to its former high place among the taverns of the earth." What actually did happen, however, was the marriage of his son Joe to Dolly, whose father gave her a handsome dowry, enabling the happy couple to return to the Maypole, reopen it, and there install themselves as host and hostess. And so they brought back to the inn all its famous glory, earning for it the epithet that there was no such country inn as the Maypole in all England.