in London could not have furnished a longer
reckoning, than our host of the "Handcuff Inn"--as Colonel Westbury
called it. Our rooms were the three in the gate over Newgate--on the
second story looking up Newgate Street towards Cheapside and Paul's
Church. And we had leave to walk on the roof, and could see thence
Smithfield and the Bluecoat Boys' School, Gardens, and the Chartreux,
where, as Harry Esmond remembered, Dick the Scholar, and his friend Tom
Tusher, had had their schooling.

Harry could never have paid his share of that prodigious heavy reckoning
which my landlord brought to his guests once a week: for he had but
three pieces in his pockets that fatal night before the duel, when the
gentlemen were at cards, and offered to play five. But whilst he was yet
ill at the Gatehouse, after Lady Castlewood had visited him there, and
before his trial, there came one in an orange-tawny coat and blue lace,
the livery which the Esmonds always wore, and brought a sealed packet
for Mr. Esmond, which contained twenty guineas, and a note saying that
a counsel had been appointed for him, and that more money would be
forthcoming whenever he needed it.

'Twas a queer letter from the scholar as she was, or as she called
herself: the Dowager Viscountess Castlewood, written in the strange
barbarous French which she and many other fine ladies of that
time--witness her Grace of Portsmouth--employed. Indeed, spelling was
not an article of general commodity in the world then, and my Lord
Marlborough's letters can show that he, for one, had but a little share
of this part of grammar:--

"MONG COUSSIN," my Lady Viscountess Dowager wrote, "je scay que vous
vous etes bravement batew et grievement blessay--du coste de feu M. le
Vicomte. M. le Compte de Varique ne se playt qua parlay de vous: M. de
Moon aucy. Il di que vous avay voulew vous bastre avecque luy--que vous
estes plus fort que luy fur l'ayscrimme--quil'y a surtout certaine Botte
que vous scavay quil n'a jammay sceu pariay: et que c'en eut ete fay de
luy si vouseluy vous vous fussiay battews ansamb. Aincy ce pauv Vicompte
est mort. Mort et pontayt--Mon coussin, mon coussin! jay dans la tayste
que vous n'estes quung pety Monst--angcy que les Esmonds ong tousjours
este. La veuve est chay moy. J'ay recuilly cet' pauve famme. Elle est
furieuse cont vous, allans tous les jours chercher ley Roy (d'icy)
demandant a gran cri revanche pour son Mary. Elle ne veux voyre ni
entende parl