it's Greek to me," says Captain Westbury. "Can you read it,
little boy?"

"Yes, sir, a little," Harry said.

"Then read, and read in English, sir, on your peril," said the lawyer.
And Harry began to translate:--

"Hath not one of your own writers said, 'The children of Adam are now
laboring as much as he himself ever did, about the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, shaking the boughs thereof, and seeking the fruit,
being for the most part unmindful of the tree of life.' Oh blind
generation! 'tis this tree of knowledge to which the serpent has led
you"--and here the boy was obliged to stop, the rest of the page being
charred by the fire: and asked of the lawyer--"Shall I go on, sir?"

The lawyer said--"This boy is deeper than he seems: who knows that he is
not laughing at us?"

"Let's have in Dick the Scholar," cried Captain Westbury, laughing: and
he called to a trooper out of the window--"Ho, Dick, come in here and
construe."

A thick-set soldier, with a square good-humored face, came in at the
summons, saluting his officer.

"Tell us what is this, Dick," says the lawyer.

"My name is Steele, sir," says the soldier. "I may be Dick for my
friends, but I don't name gentlemen of your cloth amongst them."

"Well then, Steele."

"Mr. Steele, sir, if you please. When you address a gentleman of his
Majesty's Horse Guards, be pleased not to be so familiar."

"I didn't know, sir," said the lawyer.

"How should you? I take it you are not accustomed to meet with
gentlemen," says the trooper.

"Hold thy prate, and read that bit of paper," says Westbury.

"'Tis Latin," says Dick, glancing at it, and again saluting his officer,
"and from a sermon of Mr. Cudworth's," and he translated the words
pretty much as Henry Esmond had rendered them.

"What a young scholar you are," says the Captain to the boy.

"Depend on't, he knows more than he tells," says the lawyer. "I think we
will pack him off in the coach with old Jezebel."

"For construing a bit of Latin?" said the Captain, very good-naturedly.

"I would as lief go there as anywhere," Harry Esmond said, simply, "for
there is nobody to care for me."

There must have been something touching in the child's voice, or in
this description of his solitude--for the Captain looked at him very
good-naturedly, and the trooper, called Steele, put his hand kindly on
the lad's head, and said some words in the Latin tongue.

"What does he say?" says the lawyer.

"Fa