long since--so long, that it seemed
to him as if the day never would come.

It might have been four o'clock when he heard the door of the opposite
chamber, the chaplain's room, open, and the voice of a man coughing in the
passage. Harry jumped up, thinking for certain it was a robber, or hoping
perhaps for a ghost, and, flinging open his own door, saw before him the
chaplain's door open, and a light inside, and a figure standing in the
doorway, in the midst of a great smoke which issued from the room.

"Who's there?" cried out the boy, who was of a good spirit.

"_Silentium!_" whispered the other; "'tis I, my boy!" and, holding his
hand out, Harry had no difficulty in recognizing his master and friend,
Father Holt. A curtain was over the window of the chaplain's room that
looked to the court, and Harry saw that the smoke came from a great flame
of papers which were burning in a brazier when he entered the chaplain's
room. After giving a hasty greeting and blessing to the lad, who was
charmed to see his tutor, the father continued the burning of his papers,
drawing them from a cupboard over the mantelpiece wall, which Harry had
never seen before.

Father Holt laughed, seeing the lad's attention fixed at once on this
hole. "That is right, Harry," he said; "faithful little famuli see all and
say nothing. You are faithful, I know."

"I know I would go to the stake for you," said Harry.

"I don't want your head," said the father, patting it kindly; "all you
have to do is to hold your tongue. Let us burn these papers, and say
nothing to anybody. Should you like to read them?"

Harry Esmond blushed, and held down his head; he _had_ looked as the fact
was, and without thinking, at the paper before him; and though he had seen
it, could not understand a word of it, the letters being quite clear
enough, but quite without meaning. They burned the papers, beating down
the ashes in a brazier, so that scarce any traces of them remained.

Harry had been accustomed to see Father Holt in more dresses than one; it
not being safe, or worth the danger, for Popish ecclesiastics to wear
their proper dress; and he was, in consequence, in no wise astonished that
the priest should now appear before him in a riding dress, with large buff
leather boots, and a feather to his hat, plain, but such as gentlemen
wore.

"You know the secret of the cupboard," said he, laughing, "and must be
prepared for other mysteries;" and he opened--but not a