When the gentlemen came to the half-burned papers in the bowl, they examined them eagerly enough, and their young guide was a little amused at their perplexity. "What are these?" says one. "They're written in a foreign language," says the lawyer. "What are you laughing at, little whelp?" he added, turning round as he saw the boy smile. "Mr. Holt said they were sermons," Harry said, "and bade me to burn them;" which indeed was true of those papers. "Sermons, indeed--it's treason, I would lay a wager," cries the lawyer. "Egad! it's Greek to me," says Captain Westbury. "Can you read it, little boy?" "Yes, sir, a little," Harry said. "Then read, and read in English, sir, on your peril," said the lawyer. And Harry began to translate: "Hath not one of your own writers said, 'The children of Adam are now labouring as much as he himself ever did, about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, shaking the boughs thereof, and seeking the fruit, being for the most part unmindful of the tree of life.' O blind generation! 'tis this tree of knowledge to which the serpent has led you"--and here the boy was obliged to stop, the rest of the page being charred by the fire, and asked of the lawyer--"Shall I go on, sir?" The lawyer said, "This boy is deeper than he seems: who knows that he is not laughing at us?" "Let's have in Dick the Scholar," cried Captain Westbury, laughing, and he called to a trooper out of the window, "Ho, Dick, come in here and construe." A soldier, with a good-humoured face, came in at the summons, saluting his officer. "Tell us what is this, Dick Steele," says the lawyer. "'Tis Latin," says Dick, glancing at it, and again saluting his officer, "and from a sermon of Mr. Cudworth's," and he translated the words pretty much as Henry Esmond had rendered them. "What a young scholar you are," says the Captain to the boy. "Depend on't, he knows more than he tells," says the lawyer. "I think we will pack him off in the coach with the old lady." "For construing a bit of Latin?" said the Captain, very good-naturedly. "I would as lief go there as anywhere," Harry Esmond said, simply, "for there is nobody to care for me." There must have been something touching in the child's voice, or in this description of his solitude, for the Captain looked at him very good-naturedly, and the trooper called Steele put his hand kindly on the lad's head, and said some words in the Latin language. "What does he say?" says the lawyer. "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.