either, is not criminal, but, on the contrary, praiseworthy; and as
lawful a way as the other of eluding a wrongful demand. For instance
(says he), suppose a good citizen, who had seen his Majesty take refuge
there, had been asked, "Is King Charles up that oak-tree?" his duty
would have been not to say, Yes--so that the Cromwellians should seize
the king and murder him like his father--but No; his Majesty being
private in the tree, and therefore not to be seen there by loyal
eyes: all which instruction, in religion and morals, as well as in the
rudiments of the tongues and sciences, the boy took eagerly and with
gratitude from his tutor. When, then, Holt was gone, and told Harry not
to see him, it was as if he had never been. And he had this answer pat
when he came to be questioned a few days after.

The Prince of Orange was then at Salisbury, as young Esmond learned from
seeing Doctor Tusher in his best cassock (though the roads were
muddy, and he never was known to wear his silk, only his stuff one,
a-horseback), with a great orange cockade in his broad-leafed hat, and
Nahum, his clerk, ornamented with a like decoration. The Doctor was
walking up and down in front of his parsonage, when little Esmond saw
him, and heard him say he was going to pay his duty to his Highness
the Prince, as he mounted his pad and rode away with Nahum behind. The
village people had orange cockades too, and his friend the blacksmith's
laughing daughter pinned one into Harry's old hat, which he tore out
indignantly when they bade him to cry "God save the Prince of Orange and
the Protestant religion!" but the people only laughed, for they liked
the boy in the village, where his solitary condition moved the general
pity, and where he found friendly welcomes and faces in many houses.
Father Holt had many friends there too, for he not only would fight the
blacksmith at theology, never losing his temper, but laughing the whole
time in his pleasant way; but he cured him of an ague with quinquina,