r from within, for which end, no doubt,
he had instructed his young pupil in the means of quitting the Hall.

Esmond, young as he was, would have died sooner than betray his friend
and master, as Mr. Holt well knew; for he had tried the boy more than
once, putting temptations in his way, to see whether he would yield to
them and confess afterwards, or whether he would resist them, as he did
sometimes, or whether he would lie, which he never did. Holt instructing
the boy on this point, however, that if to keep silence is not to lie,
as it certainly is not, yet silence is, after all, equivalent to a
negation--and therefore a downright No, in the interest of justice
or your friend, and in reply to a question that may be prejudicial to
either, is not criminal, but, on the contrary, praiseworthy; and as
lawful a way as the other of eluding a wrongful demand. For instance
(says he), suppose a good citizen, who had seen his Majesty take refuge
there, had been asked, "Is King Charles up that oak-tree?" his duty
would have been not to say, Yes--so that the Cromwellians should seize
the king and murder him like his father--but No; his Majesty being
private in the tree, and therefore not to be seen there by loyal
eyes: all which instruction, in religion and morals, as well as in the
rudiments of the tongues and sciences, the boy took eagerly and with
gratitude from his tutor. When, then, Holt was gone, and told Harry not
to see him, it was as if he had never been. And he had this answer pat
when he came to be questioned a few days after.

The Prince of Orange was then at Salisbury, as young Esmond learned from
seeing Doctor Tusher in his best cassock (though the roads were
muddy, and he never was known to wear his silk, only his stuff one,
a-horseback), with a great orange cockade in his broad-leafed hat, and
Nahum, his clerk, ornamented with a like decoration. The Doctor was
walking up and down in front of his parsonage, when little Esmond saw
him, and heard him say he was going to pay his duty to his Highness
the Prince, as he mounted his pad and rode away with Nahum behind. The
village people had orange cockades too, and his friend the blacksmith's
laughing daughter pinned one into Harry's old hat, which he tore out
indignantly when they bade him to cry "God save the Prince of Orange and
the Protestant religion!" but the people only laughed, for they liked
the boy in the village, where his solitary condition moved the general