Two others of the conspirators remained in town, to watch the success of the dark design. They were Ambrose Rookwood and Thomas Winter. But as the midnight of November 4th, sounded from the clocks of London and ushered in the opening hour of the Fifth, Fawkes was arrested in his hiding-place, and the scheme wrecked. Instantly, as though by magic, the rumours of some calamity narrowly averted, pervaded London, and warned Rookwood and Winter to fly. Had they trusted to the staunchness of Fawkes they and the others would have been safe enough, for that unwilling sponsor of all subsequent “guys” was as secret as the grave, and even under torture made no disclosures until by their own later acts the conspirators had rendered concealment useless. But, panic-stricken, Rookwood and Winter left London behind in the forenoon; Winter for hiding in Worcestershire, Rookwood to overtake and warn Catesby and his companions on the Holyhead Road. He came up with them at Little Brickhill and with laboured breath—for he had ridden headlong—told the tale of how the plot had been discovered. They wasted no time in discussion. If they had hasted before, they journeyed frantically now. By six o’clock, riding through a day of November rain, they had gained Ashby St. Ledgers, casting away their heavy cloaks as they went, together with aught else that might hinder their mad flight. Seventy-eight miles in seven hours was a marvellous ride in those times, and under such conditions. Perhaps some modern cyclist, eager to draw a parallel, will essay the feat under like meteorological conditions. That evening, after wild and gloomy conference at Ashby, they set out for Dunchurch, making for the “Lion” inn, the head-quarters of the pretended hunting-party, where the young and handsome Sir Everard Digby was in expectation of hearing other news than that which burst upon him when the exhausted and dispirited band drew rein before the old gabled house in the stormy night. The story of their further flight, of how Catesby and Percy died together in the fighting at Holbeach House, does not concern us here, but the old house does. An inn no longer, it still stands, as a farmhouse, in midst of Dunchurch village: a long, low, gabled building, with casement windows and timbered and plastered front; low-ceiled and heavily raftered rooms within. In the rear, beyond the farm-yard, may even yet be seen the remains of a moat, enclosing a wooded patch of ground whose story is vague and formless: relics, these, of times much more ancient than those of the Gunpowder Plot. The “Lion” was an old “pack-horse” inn for many generations afterwards.