he Father's companion went by the name of Captain James;
and it was under a very different name and appearance that Harry Esmond
afterwards saw him.

It was the next year that the Fenwick conspiracy blew up, which is a
matter of public history now, and which ended in the execution of Sir
John and many more, who suffered manfully for their treason, and who
were attended to Tyburn by my lady's father Dean Armstrong, Mr.
Collier, and other stout nonjuring clergymen, who absolved them at the
gallows-foot.

'Tis known that when Sir John was apprehended, discovery was made of a
great number of names of gentlemen engaged in the conspiracy; when, with
a noble wisdom and clemency, the Prince burned the list of conspirators
furnished to him, and said he would know no more. Now it was after this
that Lord Castlewood swore his great oath, that he would never, so
help him heaven, be engaged in any transaction against that brave and
merciful man; and so he told Holt when the indefatigable priest visited
him, and would have had him engage in a farther conspiracy. After this
my lord ever spoke of King William as he was--as one of the wisest, the
bravest, and the greatest of men. My Lady Esmond (for her part) said she
could never pardon the King, first, for ousting his father-in-law
from his throne, and secondly, for not being constant to his wife, the
Princess Mary. Indeed, I think if Nero were to rise again, and be king
of England, and a good family man, the ladies would pardon him. My lord
laughed at his wife's objections--the standard of virtue did not fit him
much.

The last conference which Mr. Holt had with his lordship took place when
Harry was come home for his first vacation from college (Harry saw his
old tutor but for a half-hour, and exchanged no private words with him),
and their talk, whatever it might be, left my Lord Viscount very much
disturbed in mind--so much so, that his wife, and his young kinsman,
Henry Esmond, could not but observe his disquiet. After Holt was
gone, my lord rebuffed Esmond, and again treated him with the greatest
deference; he shunned his wife's questions and company, and looked at
his children with such a face of gloom and anxiety, muttering, "Poor
children--poor children!" in a way that could not but fill those whose
life it was to watch him and obey him with great alarm. For which gloom,
each person interested in the Lord Castlewood, framed in his or her own
mind an interpretation.

My la