Mr. Dennis received this explanation with many nods and winks, and softened his behaviour towards Barnaby from that moment.

Hugh was right.  It was Barnaby who stood his ground, and grasped his pole more firmly when the Guards came out to clear the mob away from Westminster.

One soldier came spurring on, cutting at the hands of those who would have forced his charger back, and still Barnaby, without retreating an inch, waited for his coming.  Some called to him to fly, when the pole swept the air above the people’s heads, and the man’s saddle was empty in an instant.

Then he and Hugh turned and fled, the crowd opening and closing so quickly that there was no clue to the course they had taken.

III.—­The Storming of Newgate

For several days London was in the hands of the rioters.  Catholic chapels were burned, the private residences of Catholics were sacked.  From the moment of the first outbreak at Westminster every symptom of order vanished.  Fifty resolute men might have turned the rioters; a single company of soldiers could have scattered them like dust; but no man interposed, no authority restrained them.

But Barnaby, bold Barnaby, had been taken.  Left behind at the resort of the rioters by Hugh, who led a body of men to Chigwell, he had been captured by the soldiers, a proclamation of the Privy Council having at last encouraged the magistrates to set the military in motion for the arrest of certain ringleaders.

He was placed in Newgate and heavily ironed, and presently Grip, with drooping head and plumes rough and tumbled, was thrust into his cell.

Another man was also taken and placed in Newgate on that day, and presently he and Barnaby stood staring at each other, face to face.  Suddenly Barnaby laid hands upon him, and cried, “Ah, I know!  You are the robber!”

The other struggled with him silently, but finding the young man too strong for him, raised his eyes and said, “I am your father.”

Barnaby released his hold, fell back, and looked at him aghast.  Then he sprang towards him, put his arms about his neck, and pressed his head against his cheek.  He never learnt that his father, supposed to have been murdered, was himself a murderer.  This was the widow’s dreadful secret.

And now Hugh, with a huge army, was at the gates of Newgate, bent on rescue.  He had returned, to find Barnaby taken, and at once announced that the prison must be stormed.  In vain the military commanders tried to rouse the magistrates, and in particular the Lord Mayor; no orders were given, and the soldiers could do nothing within the precincts of the city without the warrant of the civil authorities.

In a dense mass the rioters halted before the prison-gate.  All those who had already been conspicuous were there, and others who had friends or relatives within the jail hastened to the attack.

Hugh had brought, by force, old Gabriel Varden to pick the lock of the great door, but this the sturdy locksmith resolutely refused to do.