ady Castlewood; and Westbury and Macartney had pretty nearly had all
the town to come and see them.

The duel, its fatal termination, the trial of the two peers and the
three commoners concerned, had caused the greatest excitement in the
town. The prints and News Letters were full of them. The three gentlemen
in Newgate were almost as much crowded as the bishops in the Tower, or
a highwayman before execution. We were allowed to live in the Governor's
house, as hath been said, both before trial and after condemnation,
waiting the King's pleasure; nor was the real cause of the fatal quarrel
known, so closely had my lord and the two other persons who knew it kept
the secret, but every one imagined that the origin of the meeting was
a gambling dispute. Except fresh air, the prisoners had, upon payment,
most things they could desire. Interest was made that they should not
mix with the vulgar convicts, whose ribald choruses and loud laughter
and curses could be heard from their own part of the prison, where they
and the miserable debtors were confined pell-mell.

CHAPTER II.

I COME TO THE END OF MY CAPTIVITY, BUT NOT OF MY TROUBLE.

Among the company which came to visit the two officers was an old
acquaintance of Harry Esmond; that gentleman of the Guards, namely,
who had been so kind to Harry when Captain Westbury's troop had been
quartered at Castlewood more than seven years before. Dick the Scholar
was no longer Dick the Trooper now, but Captain Steele of Lucas's
Fusiliers, and secretary to my Lord Cutts, that famous officer of King
William's, the bravest and most beloved man of the English army. The
two jolly prisoners had been drinking with a party of friends (for
our cellar and that of the keepers of Newgate, too, were supplied
with endless hampers of Burgundy and Champagne that the friends of the
Colonels sent in); and Harry, having no wish for their drink or their
conversation, being too feeble in health for the one and too sad in
spirits for the other, was sitting apart in his little room, reading
such books as he had, one evening, when honest Colonel Westbury, flushed
with liquor, and always good-humored in and out of his cups, came
laughing into Harry's closet and said, "Ho, young Killjoy! here's a
friend come to see thee; he'll pray with thee, or he'll drink with thee;
or he'll drink and pray turn about. Dick, my Christian hero, here's the
little scholar of Castlewood."

Dick came up and kissed Esmon