"Was it not agreed," asks Coke, "the same day that the act should have been done, the same day, or soon after, the person of the Lady Elizabeth should have been surprised?" "He confesseth," Fawkes is stated to have said, "that the same day this detestable act should have been performed the same day should other of their confederacy have surprised the Lady Elizabeth." Yet before setting down Fawkes's replies as a fabrication of the Government, let us remember how evidence of this kind is taken and reported. If we take up the report of a criminal trial in a modern newspaper we shall find, for the most part, a flowing narrative put into the mouths of witnesses. John Jones, let us say, is represented as giving some such evidence as this: "I woke at two o'clock in the morning, and, looking out of window, saw by the light of the moon John Smith opening the stable door," &c. Nobody who has attended a law court imagines John Jones to have used these consecutive words. Questions are put to him by the examining counsel. When did you wake? Did you see anyone at the stable door? How came you to be able to see him, and so forth; and it is by combining these questions with the Yes and No, and other brief replies made by the witness, that the reporter constructs his narrative with no appreciable violation of truth. Is it not reasonable to suppose that the same practice prevailed in 1605? Fawkes, I suppose, answered to Coke's question, "Yes, others of the confederates proposed to surprise her," or something of the sort, and the result was the combination of question and answer which is given above. What, however, was the relation between the examination of the 8th and the declaration of the 17th? Father Gerard has printed them side by side,[89] and it is impossible to deny that the latter is founded on the former. Some paragraphs of the examination are not represented in the declaration, but these are paragraphs of no practical importance, and those that are represented are modified. The modifications admitted, however, are all consistent with what is a very probable supposition, that the Government wanted to get Fawkes's previous statements collected in one paper. He had given his account of the plot on one occasion, the names of the plotters on another, and had stated on a third that they were to be classified in three divisions--those who worked first at the mine, those who worked at it afterwards, and those who did not work at all. If the Government drew up a form combining the three statements and omitting immaterial matter, and got Fawkes to sign it, this would fully account for the form in which we find the declaration. At the present day, we should object to receive evidence from a man who had been tortured once and might be tortured again; but as this declaration adds nothing of any importance to our previous knowledge, it is unnecessary to recur to first principles on this occasion.[90]