often thought of Joe Addison--Doctor Cudworth
says, 'A good conscience is the best looking-glass of Heaven'--and there's
a serenity in my friend's face which always reflects it--I wish you could
see him, Harry."

"Did he do you a great deal of good?" asked the lad, simply.

"He might have done," said the other--"at least he taught me to see and
approve better things. 'Tis my own fault, _deteriora sequi_."

"You seem very good," the boy said.

"I'm not what I seem, alas!" answered the trooper--and indeed, as it turned
out, poor Dick told the truth--for that very night, at supper in the hall,
where the gentlemen of the troop took their repasts, and passed most part
of their days dicing and smoking of tobacco, and singing and cursing, over
the Castlewood ale--Harry Esmond found Dick the Scholar in a woful state of
drunkenness. He hiccuped out a sermon; and his laughing companions bade
him sing a hymn, on which Dick, swearing he would run the scoundrel
through the body who insulted his 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