a cow, and
opened her black eyes with wonder when I made one of my fine speeches out
of Waller or Ovid. Poor Nancy! from the mist of far-off years thine honest
country face beams out; and I remember thy kind voice as if I had heard it
yesterday.

When Doctor Tusher brought the news that the small-pox was at the "Three
Castles", whither a tramper, it was said, had brought the malady, Henry
Esmond's first thought was of alarm for poor Nancy, and then of shame and
disquiet for the Castlewood family, lest he might have brought this
infection; for the truth is that Mr. Harry had been sitting in a back room
for an hour that day, where Nancy Sievewright was with a little brother
who complained of headache, and was lying stupefied and crying, either in
a chair by the corner of the fire, or in Nancy's lap, or on mine.

Little Lady Beatrix screamed out at Dr. Tusher's news; and my lord cried
out, "God bless me!" He was a brave man, and not afraid of death in any
shape but this. He was very proud of his pink complexion and fair hair--but
the idea of death by small-pox scared him beyond all other ends. "We will
take the children and ride away to-morrow to Walcote:" this was my lord's
small house, inherited from his mother, near to Winchester.

"That is the best refuge in case the disease spreads," said Dr. Tusher.
"'Tis awful to think of it beginning at the alehouse. Half the people of
the village have visited that to-day, or the blacksmith's, which is the
same thing. My clerk Simons lodges with them--I can never go into my
reading-desk and have that fellow so near me. I won't have that man near
me."

"If a parishioner dying in the small-pox sent to you, would you not go?"
asked my lady, looking up from her frame of work, with her calm blue eyes.

"By the Lord, _I_ wouldn't," said my lord.

"We are not in a Popish country: and a sick man doth not absolutely need
absolution and confession," said the doctor. "'Tis true they are a comfort
and a help to him when attainable, and to be administered with hope of
good. But in a case where the life of a parish priest in the midst of his
flock is highly valuable to them, he is not called upon to risk it (and
therewith the lives, future prospects, and temporal, even spiritual
welfare of his own family) for the sake of a single person, who is not
very likely in a condition even to understand the religious message
whereof the priest is the bringer--being uneducated, and likewise stupefied