ght him to think, as indeed Father Holt thought with all his
heart too, that no life was so noble, no death so desirable, as that which
many brethren of his famous order were ready to undergo. By love, by a
brightness of wit and good humour that charmed all, by an authority which
he knew how to assume, by a mystery and silence about him which increased
the child's reverence for him, he won Harry's absolute fealty, and would
have kept it, doubtless, if schemes greater and more important than a poor
little boy's admission into orders had not called him away.

After being at home for a few months in tranquillity (if theirs might be
called tranquillity, which was, in truth, a constant bickering), my lord
and lady left the country for London, taking their director with them: and
his little pupil scarce ever shed more bitter tears in his life than he
did for nights after the first parting with his dear friend, as he lay in
the lonely chamber next to that which the father used to occupy. He and a
few domestics were left as the only tenants of the great house: and,
though Harry sedulously did all the tasks which the father set him, he had
many hours unoccupied, and read in the library, and bewildered his little
brains with the great books he found there.

After a while the little lad grew accustomed to the loneliness of the
place; and in after days remembered this part of his life as a period not
unhappy. When the family was at London the whole of the establishment
travelled thither with the exception of the porter, who was, moreover,
brewer, gardener, and woodman, and his wife and children. These had their
lodging in the gate-house hard by, with a door into the court; and a
window looking out on the green was the chaplain's room; and next to this
a small chamber where Father Holt had his books, and Harry Esmond his
sleeping-closet. The side of the house facing the east had escaped the
guns of the Cromwellians, whose battery was on the height facing the
western court; so that this eastern end bore few marks of demolition, save
in the chapel, where the painted windows surviving Edward the Sixth had
been broke by the Commonwealth men. In Father Holt's time little Harry
Esmond acted as his familiar, and faithful little servitor; beating his
clothes, folding his vestments, fetching his water from the well long
before daylight, ready to run anywhere for the service of his beloved
priest. When the father was away he locked his private