 After attending a lecture by "Citizen Ego", a character based on John Thelwall, its narrator unwittingly becomes a prominent figure in the riots.Inverting radical accounts of the significance of the riots, "The Vagabond" presents them as solely destructive and acquisitive.Later, the hero's mentor Stupeo, based on William Godwin, attempts to establish a pantisocratic community in the American wilderness, but is captured and burned at the stake by Native Americans.