The brewer was hastily summoned, delivered the key, and was as hurriedly dismissed. Then Humphrey ran up to his closet, brought down his concealed guests, and conducted them through the buttery towards the cellar. The butler slipped away from them, and told the officers. The situation was now desperate. Inside the house the officers were pursuing them; outside, a crowd, in league with the authorities, was shouting itself hoarse in execration of them. The wretched men made one last frantic dash around the house, and Robert Winter and Stephen Littleton were arrested in the stable-yard, and prevented from reaching the neighbouring wood. But what had become of Red Humphrey? The instant he saw the game was up, he hurriedly mounted his horse, and eluded his pursuers. But he was not to escape much longer. The searching party which Poynter had led to the barn, disappointed there, scoured the neighbourhood; and at Prestwood the fugitive was taken, and committed to safe custody in Stafford Gaol. Even after they were secured, it was no easy matter to carry the other prisoners to Worcester. While they were "refreshing themselves" in an alehouse at Hagley--probably the tavern kept by Mrs Fynwood--a tumult arose among the people outside which almost led to their rescue; and a few miles from Hagley, Sir Thomas Undirhood and his company overtook the Sheriff, and vainly attempted to gain possession of them to take them back to Staffordshire. The Worcestershire men, however, held on grimly to their prize, and at last triumphantly lodged their prisoners in the gaol at Worcester. The examinations of the culprits in London went on. They were mainly characterised by Mr Fawkes's contradictions on every occasion of something which he had previously said; by the addition of a little information each time; and by the very small amount of light that could be obtained from any outsiders. On his third examination, Mr "John Johnson" owned that his name was Guy Fawkes; that he was born at York, the son of Edward Fawkes, a younger brother, who had left him "but small living," which he ran through with equally small delay. He denied on his conscience that he was in orders, "major or minor, regular or secular": on which occasion he told the truth. Fawkes added that he did not now desire to destroy the King. "It is past," he said, "and I am now sorry for it, for that I now perceive that God did not concur with it." He admitted also the design on the Lady Elizabeth, but he still declined to name his accomplices, and proved obdurate to all attempts--and the attempts were basely made--to persuade him to accuse the prisoners in the Tower, of whom the chief was Sir Walter Raleigh. The utmost he could be induced to admit concerning this point was that it had been "under consultation that the prisoners in the Tower should have intelligence" of the intended plot, and that Raleigh and several others had been named in this connection.