The princely pile, known as Somerset House, remains even to this day unfinished, and at the time of our story was, with the exception of one block, scarcely raised above its foundations. The large square court and every empty space, for many rods around its site, were cumbered with building materials. Piles of rude stone—beds of newly made mortar—window-sashes, with the lead and rich glass that composed them, crushed together from the carelessness with which they had been flung down—cornices with the gilding yet fresh upon them—great fragments of carved oak—beams of timber with flags of marble, and even images of saints, broken as they were torn from their niches, lay heaped together promiscuously and with a kind of sacrilegious carelessness. That block of the building, which runs parallel with the river, alone was completed, while that portion of the square, which forms its angle on the strand, was built to the second story so far as the great arched entrance. But all the rest was only massed out by a line of rough stones sunk into the earth, and in places almost concealed by the heaps of rubbish which we have described. Notwithstanding the unfinished state of his palace the Lord Protector had taken possession of that portion already completed, and from the sumptuous—nay, almost regal magnificence of its adornments, seemed determined to rival his royal nephew and king, in state, as he had already done in power. We have been particular in describing the Lord Protector’s residence, for, at the time our story resumes its thread, it contained the leading personages who rendered themselves conspicuous in the St. Margaret’s riot. Once more the gray of morning hung over the city of London, a faint hum of voices and the sound of busy feet rose gradually within its bosom. With the earliest glimmer a host of workmen came to their daily toil upon the palace, and were seen in the yet dim light swarming upon the heaps of material gathered in the court, and creeping, like ants drawn from their mound, along the damp walls and the scaffolding that bristled over them.