"Silentium!" whispered the other; "'tis I, my boy!" holding his hand out, and Harry recognised Father Holt. A curtain was over the window that looked to the court, and he saw that the smoke came from a great flame of papers burning in a bowl when he entered the Chaplain's room. After giving a hasty greeting and blessing to the lad, who was charmed to see his tutor, the Father continued the burning of his papers, drawing them from a cupboard over the mantelpiece wall, which Harry had never seen before.
Father Holt laughed, seeing the lad's attention fixed at once on this hole. "That is right, Harry," he said; "see all and say nothing. You are faithful, I know."
"I know I would go to the stake for you," said Harry.
"I don't want your head," said the Father, patting it kindly; "all you have to do is to hold your tongue. Let us burn these papers, and say nothing to anybody. Should you like to read them?"
Harry Esmond blushed, and held down his head; he had looked, but without thinking, at the paper before him; but though he had seen it before, he could not understand a word of it. They burned the papers until scarce any traces of them remained.
Harry had been accustomed to seeing Father Holt in more dresses than one; it not being safe, or worth the danger, for Popish priests to wear their proper dress; so he was in no wise astonished that the priest should now appear before him in a riding-dress, with large buff leather boots, and a feather to his hat, plain, but such as gentlemen wore.
"You know the secret of the cupboard," said he, laughing, "and must be prepared for other mysteries"; and he opened a wardrobe, which he usually kept locked, but from which he now took out two or three dresses and wigs of different colours, and a couple of swords, a military coat and cloak, and a farmer's smock, and placed them in the large hole over the mantelpiece from which the papers had been taken.
"If they miss the cupboard," he said, "they will not find these; if they find them, they'll tell no tales, except that Father Holt wore more suits of clothes than one. All Jesuits do. You know what deceivers we are, Harry."
Harry was alarmed at the notion that his friend was about to leave him; but "No," the priest said, "I may very likely come back with my lord in a few days. We are to be tolerated; we are not to be persecuted. But they may take a fancy to pay a visit at Castlewood ere our return; and, as gentlemen of my cloth are suspected, they might choose to examine my papers, which concern nobody—at least not them." And to this day, whether the papers in cipher related to politics, or to the affairs of that mysterious society whereof Father Holt was a member, his pupil, Harry Esmond, remains in entire ignorance.
The rest of his goods Father Holt left untouched on his shelves and in his cupboard, taking down—with a laugh, however—and flinging into the brazier, where he only half burned them, some theological treatises which he had been writing. "And now," said he, "Henry, my son, you may testify, with a safe conscience, that you saw me burning Latin sermons the last time I was here before I went away to London; and it will be daybreak directly, and I must be away before Lockwood is stirring."