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