o somewhat out of his postal way to catch the Captain's dark eye,
and show that he had not forgotten how to salute an officer.

But they were "trying times." One afternoon the black mare was stepping
gently up and down the grass, with her head at her master's shoulder,
and as many children crowded on to her silky back as if she had been an
elephant in a menagerie; and the next afternoon she carried him away,
sword and _sabre-tache_ clattering war-music at her side, and the
old Postman waiting for them, rigid with salutation, at the four cross
roads.

War and bad times! It was a hard winter, and the big Miss Jessamine and
the little Miss Jessamine (but she was Mrs. Black-Captain now), lived
very economically that they might help their poorer neighbors. They
neither entertained nor went into company, but the young lady always
went up the village as far as the _George and Dragon_, for air and
exercise, when the London Mail[2] came in.

[Footnote 2: The Mail Coach it was that distributed over the face of the
land, like the opening of apocalyptic vials, the heart-shaking news of
Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Waterloo.... The grandest
chapter of our experience, within the whole Mail Coach service, was on
those occasions when we went down from London with the news of Victory.
Five years of life it was worth paying down for the privilege of an
outside place. DE QUINCEY.]

One day (it was a day in the following June) it came in earlier than
usual, and the young lady was not there to meet it.

But a crowd soon gathered round the _George and Dragon_, gaping to
see the Mail Coach dressed with flowers and oak-leaves, and the guard
wearing a laurel wreath over and above his royal livery. The ribbons
that decked the horses were stained and flecked with the warmth and foam
of the pace at which they had come, for they had pressed on with the
news of Victory.

Miss Jessamine was sitting with her niece under the oak-tree on the
Green, when the Postman put a newspaper silently into her hand. Her
niece turned quickly--"Is there news?"

"Don't agitate yourself, my dear," said her aunt. "I will read it aloud,
and then we can enjoy it together; a far more comfortable method, my
love, than when you go up the village, and come home out of breath,
having snatched half the news as you run."

"I am all attention, dear aunt," said the little lady, clasping her
hands tightly on her lap.

Then Miss Jessamine read aloud--she was