CHAPTER IV.

I AM PLACED UNDER A POPISH PRIEST AND BRED TO THAT
RELIGION.--VISCOUNTESS CASTLEWOOD.


Had time enough been given, and his childish inclinations been properly
nurtured, Harry Esmond had been a Jesuit priest ere he was a dozen years
older, and might have finished his days a martyr in China or a victim
on Tower Hill: for, in the few months they spent together at Castlewood,
Mr. Holt obtained an entire mastery over the boy's intellect and
affections; and had brought 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-humor 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,