is
religion, made for his sword, which was hanging on the wall, and fell
down flat on the floor under it, saying to Harry, who ran forward to
help him, "Ah, little Papist, I wish Joseph Addison was here!"

Though the troopers of the King's Life-Guards were all gentlemen, yet
the rest of the gentlemen seemed ignorant and vulgar boors to Harry
Esmond, with the exception of this good-natured Corporal Steele the
Scholar, and Captain Westbury and Lieutenant Trant, who were always
kind to the lad. They remained for some weeks or months encamped in
Castlewood, and Harry learned from them, from time to time, how the lady
at Hexton Castle was treated, and the particulars of her confinement
there. 'Tis known that King William was disposed to deal very leniently
with the gentry who remained faithful to the old King's cause; and no
prince usurping a crown, as his enemies said he did, (righteously
taking it, as I think now,) ever caused less blood to be shed. As for
women-conspirators, he kept spies on the least dangerous, and locked up
the others. Lady Castlewood had the best rooms in Hexton Castle, and the
gaoler's garden to walk in; and though she repeatedly desired to be led
out to execution, like Mary Queen of Scots, there never was any thought
of taking her painted old head off, or any desire to do aught but keep
her person in security.

And it appeared she found that some were friends in her misfortune, whom
she had, in her prosperity, considered as her worst enemies. Colonel
Francis Esmond, my lord's cousin and her ladyship's, who had married the
Dean of Winchester's daughter, and, since King James's departure out of
England, had lived not very far away from Hexton town, hearing of his
kinswoman's strait, and being friends with Colonel Brice, commanding for
King William in Hexton, and with the Church dignitaries there, came
to visit her ladyship in prison, offering to his uncle's daughter any
friendly services which lay in his power. And he brought his lady and
little daughter to see the prisoner, to the latter of whom, a child
of great beauty and many winning ways, the old Viscountess took not
a little liking, although between her ladyship and the child's mother
there was little more love than formerly. There are some injuries which
women never forgive one another; and Madam Francis Esmond, in marrying
her cousin, had done one of those irretrievable wrongs to Lady
Castlewood. But as she was now humiliated, and in misfortun