e hand, or only stamped with a cold iron; or this part of
the punishment is altogether remitted at the grace of the Sovereign. So
Harry Esmond found himself a criminal and a prisoner at two-and-twenty
years old; as for the two colonels, his comrades, they took the matter
very lightly. Duelling was a part of their business; and they could not
in honor refuse any invitations of that sort.

But the case was different with Mr. Esmond. His life was changed by
that stroke of the sword which destroyed his kind patron's. As he lay in
prison, old Dr. Tusher fell ill and died; and Lady Castlewood appointed
Thomas Tusher to the vacant living; about the filling of which she had
a thousand times fondly talked to Harry Esmond: how they never should
part; how he should educate her boy; how to be a country clergyman, like
saintly George Herbert or pious Dr. Ken, was the happiest and greatest
lot in life; how (if he were obstinately bent on it, though, for her
part, she owned rather to holding Queen Bess's opinion, that a bishop
should have no wife, and if not a bishop why a clergyman?) she would
find a good wife for Harry Esmond: and so on, with a hundred pretty
prospects told by fireside evenings, in fond prattle, as the children
played about the hall. All these plans were overthrown now. Thomas
Tusher wrote to Esmond, as he lay in prison, announcing that his
patroness had conferred upon him the living his reverend father had
held for many years; that she never, after the tragical events which had
occurred (whereof Tom spoke with a very edifying horror), could see
in the revered Tusher's pulpit, or at her son's table, the man who was
answerable for the father's life; that her ladyship bade him to say that
she prayed for her kinsman's repentance and his worldly happiness; that
he was free to command her aid for any scheme of life which he might
propose to himself; but that on this side of the grave she would see him
no more. And Tusher, for his own part, added that Harry should have his
prayers as a friend of his youth, and commended him whilst he was in
prison to read certain works of theology, which his Reverence pronounced
to be very wholesome for sinners in his lamentable condition.

And this was the return for a life of devotion--this the end of years of
affectionate intercourse and passionate fidelity! Harry would have died
for his patron, and was held as little better than his murderer: he had
sacrificed, she did not know how mu