s views secret, and to hide them as a great
treasure which would escape him if it was revealed; and, proud of this
confidence and secret vested in him, the lad became fondly attached to
the master who initiated him into a mystery so wonderful and awful. And
when little Tom Tusher, his neighbour, came from school for his holiday,
and said how he, too; like Harry, was to be bred up for an English
priest, and would get a college scholarship and fellowship from his
school, and then a good living--it tasked young Harry Esmond's powers of
reticence not to say to his young companion, "Church! priesthood! fat
living! My dear Tommy, do you call yours a church and a priesthood? What
is a fat living compared to converting a hundred thousand heathens by a
single sermon? What is a scholarship at Trinity by the side of a crown of
martyrdom, with angels awaiting you as your head is taken off? Could your
master at school sail over the Thames on his gown? Have you statues in
your church that can bleed, speak, walk, and cry? My good Tommy, in dear
Father Holt's church these things take place every day. You know Saint
Philip of the Willows appeared to Lord Castlewood, and caused him to turn
to the one true church. No saints ever come to you." And Harry Esmond,
because of his promise to Father Holt, hiding away these treasures of
faith from T. Tusher, delivered himself of them nevertheless simply to
Father Holt; who stroked his head, smiled at him with his inscrutable
look, and told him that he did well to meditate on these great things,
and not to talk of them except under direction.

Had time enough been given, and his childish inclinations been properly
nurtured, Harry Esmond had been a Jesuit priest ere he was a dozen years
older, and might have finished his days a martyr in China or a victim on
Tower Hill; for, in the few months they spent together at Castlewood, Mr.
Holt obtained an entire mastery over the boy's intellect and affections,
and had brought him to think, as indeed Father Holt thought, with all his
heart too, that no life was so noble, no death so desirable, as that
which many brethren of his famous order were ready to undergo. By love,
by a brightness of wit and good humour that charmed all, by an authority
which he knew how to assume, by a mystery and silence about him which
increased the child's reverence for him, he won Harry's absolute fealty,
and would have kept it, doubtless, if schemes greater and more important
th