"I said I was not ignorant of misfortune myself, and had learned to
succor the miserable, and that's not your trade, Mr. Sheepskin," said
the trooper.

"You had better leave Dick the Scholar alone, Mr. Corbett!" the Captain
said. And Harry Esmond, always touched by a kind face and a kind word,
felt very grateful to this good-natured champion.

The horses were by this time harnessed to the coach; and my Lady Isabella
was consigned to that vehicle and sent off to Hexton, with her woman and
the man-of-law to bear her company, a couple of troopers riding on either
side of the coach. And Harry was left behind at the Hall, belonging, as
it were, to nobody, and quite alone in the world. The Captain and a guard
of men remained in possession there; and the soldiers, who were very
good-natured and kind, ate my lord's mutton and drank his wine, and made
themselves comfortable, as they well might do in such pleasant quarters.

After the departure of the countess, Dick the Scholar took Harry Esmond
under his special protection, and would talk to him both of French and
Latin, in which tongues the lad found that he was even more proficient
than Scholar Dick. Hearing that he had learned them from a Jesuit, in the
praise of whom and whose goodness Harry was never tired of speaking,
Dick, rather to the boy's surprise, showed a great deal of theological
science, and knowledge of the points at issue between the Catholic and
Protestant churches; so that he and Harry would have hours of
controversy together, with which conversations the long days of the
trooper's stay at Castlewood were whiled away. Though the other troopers
were all gentlemen, they seemed ignorant and vulgar to Harry Esmond, with
the exception of this good-natured Corporal Steele, Scholar, although