ery well, and everything presages the satisfactory overthrow of the great
victim; until one day Gulliver rouses himself, shakes off the little
vermin of an enemy, and walks away unmolested. Ah! the Irish soldiers
might well say after the Boyne, "Change kings with us, and we will fight
it over again." Indeed, the fight was not fair between the two. 'Twas a
weak priest-ridden, woman-ridden man, with such puny allies and weapons as
his own poor nature led him to choose, contending against the schemes, the
generalship, the wisdom, and the heart of a hero.

On one of these many coward's errands, then (for, as I view them now, I
can call them no less), Mr. Holt had come to my lord at Castlewood,
proposing some infallible plan for the Prince of Orange's destruction, in
which my lord viscount, loyalist as he was, had indignantly refused to
join. As far as Mr. Esmond could gather from his dying words, Holt came to
my lord with a plan of insurrection, and offer of the renewal, in his
person, of that marquis's title which King James had conferred on the
preceding viscount; and on refusal of this bribe, a threat was made, on
Holt's part, to upset my lord viscount's claim to his estate and title of
Castlewood altogether. To back this astounding piece of intelligence, of
which Henry Esmond's patron now had the first light, Holt came armed with
the late lord's dying declaration, after the affair of the Boyne, at Trim,
in Ireland, made both to the Irish priest and a French ecclesiastic of
Holt's order, that was with King James's army. Holt showed, or pretended
to show, the marriage certificate of the late Viscount Esmond with my
mother, in the city of Brussels, in the year 1677, when the viscount, then
Thomas Esmond, was serving with the English army in Flanders; he could
show, he said, that this Gertrude, deserted by her husband long since, was
alive, and a professed nun in the year 1685, at Brussels, in which year
Thomas Esmond married his uncle's daughter, Isabella, now called
Viscountess Dowager of Castlewood; and leaving him, for twelve hours, to
consider this astounding news (so the poor dying lord said), disappeared
with his papers in the mysterious way in which he came. Esmond knew how,
well enough: by that window from which he had seen the father issue:--but
there was no need to explain to my poor lord, only to gather from his
parting lips the words which he would soon be able to utter no more.

Ere the twelve hours were over,