y thought with many a pang of shame and grief of his
strange and solitary condition: how he had a father and no father; a
nameless mother that had been brought to ruin, perhaps, by that very
father whom Harry could only acknowledge in secret and with a blush,
and whom he could neither love nor revere. And he sickened to think how
Father Holt, a stranger, and two or three soldiers, his acquaintances
of the last six weeks, were the only friends he had in the great wide
world, where he was now quite alone. The soul of the boy was full of
love, and he longed as he lay in the darkness there for some one upon
whom he could bestow it. He remembers, and must to his dying day, the
thoughts and tears of that long night, the hours tolling through it.
Who was he, and what? Why here rather than elsewhere? I have a mind, he
thought, to go to that priest at Trim, and find out what my father said
to him on his death-bed confession. Is there any child in the whole
world so unprotected as I am? Shall I get up and quit this place, and
run to Ireland? With these thoughts and tears the lad passed that night
away until he wept himself to sleep.

The next day, the gentlemen of the guard, who had heard what had
befallen him, were more than usually kind to the child, especially his
friend Scholar Dick, who told him about his own father's death, which
had happened when Dick was a child at Dublin, not quite five years of
age. "That was the first sensation of grief," Dick said, "I ever knew.
I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat
weeping beside it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating
the coffin, and calling Papa; on which my mother caught me in her arms,
and told me in a flood of tears Papa could not hear me, and would play
with me no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he
could never come to us again. And this," said Dick kindly, "has made
me pity all children ever since; and caused me to love thee, my poor
fatherless, motherless lad. And, if ever thou wantest a friend, thou
shalt have one in Richard Steele."

Harry Esmond thanked him, and was grateful. But what could Corporal
Steele do for him? take him to ride a spare horse, and be servant to the
troop? Though there might be a bar in Harry Esmond's shield, it was a
noble one. The counsel of the two friends was, that little Harry
should stay where he was, and abide his fortune: so Esmond stayed on at
Castlewood, awaiting with n