ud of his pink complexion and fair
hair--but the idea of death by small-pox scared him beyond all other
ends. "We will take the children and ride away to-morrow to Walcote:"
this was my lord's small house, inherited from his mother, near to
Winchester.

"That is the best refuge in case the disease spreads," said Dr. Tusher.
"'Tis awful to think of it beginning at the ale-house; half the people
of the village have visited that to-day, or the blacksmith's, which is
the same thing. My clerk Nahum lodges with them--I can never go into my
reading-desk and have that fellow so near me. I WON'T have that man near
me."

"If a parishioner dying in the small-pox sent to you, would you not go?"
asked my lady, looking up from her frame of work, with her calm blue
eyes.

"By the Lord, I wouldn't," said my lord.

"We are not in a popish country; and a sick man doth not absolutely
need absolution and confession," said the Doctor. "'Tis true they are a
comfort and a help to him when attainable, and to be administered with
hope of good. But in a case where the life of a parish priest in the
midst of his flock is highly valuable to them, he is not called upon to
risk it (and therewith the lives, future prospects, and temporal, even
spiritual welfare of his own family) for the sake of a single person,
who is not very likely in a condition even to understand the religious
message whereof the priest is the bringer--being uneducated, and
likewise stupefied or delirious by disease. If your ladyship or his
lordship, my excellent good friend and patron, were to take it . . ."

"God forbid!" cried my lord.

"Amen," continued Dr. Tusher. "Amen to that prayer, my very good lord!
for your sake I would lay my life down"--and, to judge from the alarmed
look of the Doctor's purple face, you would have thought that that
sacrifice was about to be called for instantly.

To love children, and be gentle with them, was an instinct, rather than
a merit, in Henry Esmond; so much so, that he thought almost with a
sort of shame of his liking for them, and of the softness into which it
betrayed him; and on this day the poor fellow had not only had his
young friend, the milkmaid's brother, on his knee, but had been drawing
pictures and telling stories to the little Frank Castlewood, who had
occupied the same place for an hour after dinner, and was never tired
of Henry's tales, and his pictures of soldiers and horses. As luck would
have it, Beatrix had not