“I didn’t know, sir,” said the lawyer.

“How should you?  I take it you are not accustomed to meet with gentlemen,” says the trooper.

“Hold thy prate, and read that bit of paper,” says Westbury.

“’Tis Latin,” says Dick, glancing at it, and again saluting his officer, “and from a sermon of Mr. Cudworth’s,” and he translated the words pretty much as Henry Esmond had rendered them.

“What a young scholar you are,” says the Captain to the boy.

“Depend on’t, he knows more than he tells,” says the lawyer.  “I think we will pack him off in the coach with old Jezebel.”

“For construing a bit of Latin?” said the Captain, very good-naturedly.

“I would as lief go there as anywhere,” Harry Esmond said, simply, “for there is nobody to care for me.”

There must have been something touching in the child’s voice, or in this description of his solitude—­for the Captain looked at him very good-naturedly, and the trooper, called Steele, put his hand kindly on the lad’s head, and said some words in the Latin tongue.

“What does he say?” says the lawyer.

“Faith, ask Dick himself,” cried Captain Westbury.

“I said I was not ignorant of misfortune myself, and had learned to succor the miserable, and that’s not your trade, Mr. Sheepskin,” said the trooper.

“You had better leave Dick the Scholar alone, Mr. Corbet,” the Captain said.  And Harry Esmond, always touched by a kind face and kind word, felt very grateful to this good-natured champion.

The horses were by this time harnessed to the coach; and the Countess and Victoire came down and were put into the vehicle.  This woman, who quarrelled with Harry Esmond all day, was melted at parting with him, and called him “dear angel,” and “poor infant,” and a hundred other names.

The Viscountess, giving him her lean hand to kiss, bade him always be faithful to the house of Esmond.  “If evil should happen to my lord,” says she, “his successor, I trust, will be found, and give you protection.  Situated as I am, they will not dare wreak their vengeance on me now.”  And she kissed a medal she wore with great fervor, and Henry Esmond knew not in the least what her meaning was; but hath since learned that, old as she was, she was for ever expecting, by the good offices of saints and relics, to have an heir to the title of Esmond.

Harry Esmond was too young to have been introduced into the secrets of politics in which his patrons were implicated; for they put but few questions to the boy (who was little of stature, and looked much younger than his age), and such questions as they put he answered cautiously enough, and professing even more ignorance than he had, for which his examiners willingly enough gave him credit.  He did not say a word about the window or the cupboard over the fireplace; and these secrets quite escaped the eyes of the searchers.