About the King’s follower, the Viscount Castlewood—­orphan of his son, ruined by his fidelity, bearing many wounds and marks of bravery, old and in exile—­his kinsmen I suppose should be silent; nor if this patriarch fell down in his cups, call fie upon him, and fetch passers-by to laugh at his red face and white hairs.  What! does a stream rush out of a mountain free and pure, to roll through fair pastures, to feed and throw out bright tributaries, and to end in a village gutter?  Lives that have noble commencements have often no better endings; it is not without a kind of awe and reverence that an observer should speculate upon such careers as he traces the course of them.  I have seen too much of success in life to take off my hat and huzzah to it as it passes in its gilt coach:  and would do my little part with my neighbors on foot, that they should not gape with too much wonder, nor applaud too loudly.  Is it the Lord Mayor going in state to mince-pies and the Mansion House?  Is it poor Jack of Newgate’s procession, with the sheriff and javelin-men, conducting him on his last journey to Tyburn?  I look into my heart and think that I sin as good as my Lord Mayor, and know I am as bad as Tyburn Jack.  Give me a chain and red gown and a pudding before me, and I could play the part of Alderman very well, and sentence Jack after dinner.  Starve me, keep me from books and honest people, educate me to love dice, gin, and pleasure, and put me on Hounslow Heath, with a purse before me, and I will take it.  “And I shall be deservedly hanged,” say you, wishing to put an end to this prosing.  I don’t say No.  I can’t but accept the world as I find it, including a rope’s end, as long as it is in fashion.

CHAPTER I.

An account of the family of Esmond of Castlewood hall.

When Francis, fourth Viscount Castlewood, came to his title, and presently after to take possession of his house of Castlewood, county Hants, in the year 1691, almost the only tenant of the place besides the domestics was a lad of twelve years of age, of whom no one seemed to take any note until my Lady Viscountess lighted upon him, going over the house with the housekeeper on the day of her arrival.  The boy was in the room known as the Book-room, or Yellow Gallery, where the portraits of the family used to hang, that fine piece among others of Sir Antonio Van Dyck of George, second Viscount, and that by Mr. Dobson of my lord the third Viscount, just deceased, which it seems his lady and widow did not think fit to carry away, when she sent for and carried off to her house at Chelsey, near to London, the picture of herself by Sir Peter Lely, in which her ladyship was represented as a huntress of Diana’s court.

The new and fair lady of Castlewood found the sad, lonely, little occupant of this gallery busy over his great book, which he laid down when he was aware that a stranger was at hand.  And, knowing who that person must be, the lad stood up and bowed before her, performing a shy obeisance to the mistress of his house.