A Child's History of England.177

His object was, when the King, lords, and commons, should [表推测] be assembled at the next opening of Parliament, to blow them up, one and all, with a great mine [地雷坑道] of gunpowder. The first person to whom he confided this horrible idea was Thomas Winter, a Worcestershire gentleman who had served in the army abroad, and had been secretly employed in Catholic projects. While Winter was yet undecided, and when he had gone over to the Netherlands, to learn from the Spanish Ambassador there whether there was any hope of Catholics being relieved through the intercession [intercession] of the King of Spain with his Sowship, he found at Ostend a tall, dark, daring man, whom he had known when they were both soldiers abroad, and whose name was Guido - or Guy - Fawkes. Resolved to join the plot, he proposed it to this man, knowing him to be the man for any desperate deed, and they two came back to England together. Here, they admitted [接纳] two other conspirators; Thomas Percy, related to the Earl of Northumberland, and John Wright, his brother-in-law. All these met together in a solitary house in the open fields which were then near Clement's Inn, now a closely blocked-up part of London; and when they had all taken a great oath of secrecy, Catesby told the rest what his plan was. They then went up-stairs into a garret [阁楼], and received the Sacrament [坚信礼] from Father [神父] Gerard, a Jesuit [ 耶稣会会士], who is said not to have known actually of the Gunpowder Plot, but who, I think, must have had his suspicions that there was something desperate afoot [进行中].

Percy was a Gentleman Pensioner, and as he had occasional duties to perform about the Court, then [彼时] kept [举行] at Whitehall, there would be nothing suspicious in his living at Westminster. So, having looked well about him, and having found a house to let [租], the back of which joined the Parliament House, he hired |it of|[表强调] a person named Ferris, for the purpose of undermining the wall. Having got possession of this house, the conspirators hired another on the Lambeth side of the Thames, which they used as a storehouse for wood, gunpowder, and other combustible matters. These were to be removed [改变位置] at night (and afterwards were removed), bit by bit, to the house at Westminster; and, that there might be some trusty person to keep watch over the Lambeth stores, they admitted another conspirator, by name Robert Kay, a very poor Catholic gentleman.

All these arrangements had been made some months, and it was a dark, wintry, December night, when the conspirators, who had been in the meantime dispersed to avoid observation, met in the house at Westminster, and began to dig. They had laid in [储存] a good stock of eatables, to avoid going in and out, and they dug and dug with great ardour [热忱]. But, the wall being tremendously thick, and the work very severe, they took into their plot Christopher Wright, a younger brother of John Wright, that they might have a new pair of hands to help. And Christopher Wright fell to [begin] like a fresh man, and they dug and dug by night and by day, and Fawkes stood sentinel [哨兵] all the time. And if any man's heart seemed to fail him at all, Fawkes said, 'Gentlemen, we have abundance of powder and shot here, and there is no fear of our being taken alive, even if discovered.' The same Fawkes, who, in the capacity of sentinel, was always prowling [徘徊] about, soon picked up the intelligence [情报] that the King had prorogued [休会] the Parliament again, from the seventh of February, the day first fixed upon, until the third of October. When the conspirators knew this, they agreed to separate until after the Christmas holidays, and to take no notice of each other in the meanwhile, and never to write letters to one another on any account. So, the house in Westminster was shut up again, and I suppose the neighbours thought that those strange-looking men who lived there so gloomily, and went out so seldom, were gone away to have a merry Christmas somewhere.

It was the beginning of February, sixteen hundred and five, when Catesby met his fellow-conspirators again at this Westminster house. He had now admitted three more; John Grant, a Warwickshire gentleman of a melancholy temper, who lived in a doleful [令人沮丧的] house near Stratford-upon-Avon, with a frowning wall all round it, and a deep moat [壕沟]; Robert Winter, eldest brother of Thomas; and Catesby's own servant, Thomas Bates, who, Catesby thought, had had some suspicion of what his master was about. These three had all suffered more or less for their religion in Elizabeth's time. And now, they all began to dig again, and they dug and dug by night and by day.

A frowning wall is a wall that appears somewhat oppressive and threatening.

六级/考研单词: assemble, parliament, powder, confide, catholic, ambassador, relieve, dare, resolve, plot, deed, solitary, inn, suspicion, undermine, conspire, meanwhile, disperse, dig, tremendous, abundant, shot, intellect, tertiary, notify, gloom, seldom, merry, temper, frown, shallow, elder