but none were taken at Castlewood. The house-keeper was old; my lady's own waiting-woman squinted, and was marked with the small-pox; the housemaids and scullion were ordinary country wenches, to whom Lady Castlewood was kind, as her nature made her to everybody almost; but as soon as ever she had to do with a pretty woman, she was cold, retiring, and haughty. The country ladies found this fault in her; and though the men all admired her, their wives and daughters complained of her coldness and airs, and said that Castlewood was pleasanter in Lady Jezebel's time (as the dowager was called), than at present. Some few were of my mistress's side. Old Lady Blenkinsop Jointure, who had been at court in King James the First's time, always took her side; and so did old Mistress Crookshank, Bishop Crookshank's daughter, of Hexton, who, with some more of their like, pronounced my lady an angel; but the pretty women were not of this mind; and the opinion of the country was that my lord was tied to his wife's apron-strings, and that she ruled over him.

The second fight which Harry Esmond had, was at fourteen years of age, with Bryan Hawkshaw, Sir John Hawkshaw's son, of Bramblebrook, who advancing this opinion that my lady was jealous, and henpecked my lord, put Harry into such a fury, that Harry fell on him, and with such rage, that the other boy, who was two years older, and by far bigger than he, had by far the worst of the assault, until it was interrupted by Doctor Tusher walking out of the dinner room.

Bryan Hawkshaw got up, bleeding at the nose, having, indeed, been surprised, as many a stronger

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man might have been, by the fury of the assault upon him.

"You little bastard beggar!" he said, "I'll murder you for this!"

And indeed he was big enough.

"Bastard or not, " said the other, grinding his teeth, "I have a couple of swords, and if you like to meet me, as a man, on the terrace to-night —

And here the Doctor coming up, the colloquy of the young champions ended. Very likely, big as he was, Hawkshaw did not care to continue a fight with such a ferocious opponent as this had been.

CHAPTER VIII.

After good fortune comes evil.

SINCE my Lady Mary Wortly Montagu brought home the custom of inoculation from Turkey (a perilous practice many deem it, and only a useless rushing into the jaws of danger), I think the severity of the small-pox, that dreadful scourge of the world, has somewhat been abated in our part of it; and remember in my time hundreds of the young and beautiful who have been carried to the grave, or have only risen from their pillows frightfully scarred and disfigured by this malady. Many a sweet face hath left its roses on the bed, on which this dreadful and withering blight has laid them. In my early days this pestilence would enter a village and destroy half its inhabitants: at its approach it may well be imagined not only that the beautiful but the strongest were alarmed, and those fled who could. One day, in the year 1694 (I have good reason to remember it), Doctor Tusher ran into Castlewood House, with a face of consternation, saying that the malady had made its appearance at the blacksmith's house in the village, and that one of the maids there was down in the small-pox.

The blacksmith, besides his forge and irons for horses, had an alehouse for men, which his wife kept, and his company sate on benches before the inn door, looking at the smithy while they drank their beer. Now, there was a pretty girl at this inn, the landlord's

men called Nancy Sievewright, a bouncing, freshlooking lass, whose face was as red as the hollyhocks over the pales of the garden behind the inn. At this time Harry Esmond was a lad of sixteen, and somehow in his walks and rambles it often happened that he fell in with Nancy Sievewright's bonny face; if he did not want something done at the blacksmith's, he would go and drink ale at the Three Castles, or find some pretext for seeing this poor Nancy. Poor thing, Harry meant or imagined no harm; and she, no doubt, as little, but the truth is they were always meeting in the lanes, or by the brook, or at the garden-palings, or about Castlewood: it was, "Lord, Mr. Henry," and "How do you do, Nancy?" many and many a time in the week. 'Tis surprising the magnetic attraction which draws people together from ever so far. I blush as I think of poor Nancy now, in a red boddice and buxom purple cheeks and a canvass petticoat; and that I devised schemes, and set traps, and made speeches in my heart, which I seldom had courage to say when in presence of that humble enchantress, who knew nothing beyond milking 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. Henry 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 stupified 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. ""T is 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