Never, assuredly, was a true story so hard to tell. Contradictions like these, upon every single point of the narrative, are just such as are wont to betray the author of a fiction when compelled to be circumstantial. To say nothing of the curious discrepancies as to the date of the warning, it is clearly impossible to determine the locality of Guy's arrest. The account officially published in the "King's Book" says that this took place in the street. The letter to the ambassadors assigns it to the cellar and afterwards to the street; that to Parry, to the cellar only. Faukes himself, in his confession of November 5th, says that he was apprehended neither in the street nor in the cellar, but in his own room in the adjoining house. Chamberlain writes to Carleton, November 7th, that it was in the cellar. Howes, in his continuation of Stowe's _Annals_, describes two arrests of Faukes, one in the street, the other upstairs in his own chamber. This point, though seemingly somewhat trivial, has been invested with much importance. According to the time-honoured story, the baffled desperado roundly declared that had he been within reach of the powder when his captors appeared, he would have applied a match and involved them in his own destruction. This circumstance is strongly insisted on not only in the "King's Book," but also in his Majesty's speech to Parliament on November 9th, which declared, "and in that also was there a wonderful providence of God, that when the party himself was taken he was but new come out of his house from working, having his fire-work for kindling ready in his pocket, wherewith, as he confesseth, if he been taken immediately before, he was resolved to have blown up himself with his takers." We learn, however, from Cecil's earliest version of the history, that Faukes was apprehended in the very situation most suitable for such a purpose, "in the place itself, as he was busy to prepare his things for execution," while Chamberlain adds that he was actually engaged in "making his trains."