"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.