Five-and-thirty British
Captains fell asleep that day on the bed of Honor, and the Black
Captain slept among them.

[Footnote 3: "Brunswick's fated chieftain" fell at Quatre Bras, the
day before Waterloo, but this first (very imperfect) list, as it
appeared in the newspapers of the day, did begin with his name, and
end with that of an Ensign Brown.]

* * * * *

There are killed and wounded by war, of whom no returns reach Downing
Street.

Three days later, the Captain's wife had joined him, and Miss
Jessamine was kneeling by the cradle of their orphan son, a purple-red
morsel of humanity, with conspicuously golden hair.

"Will he live, Doctor?"

"Live? GOD bless my soul, ma'am! Look at him! The young Jackanapes!"

CHAPTER II.

And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old Nurse.

LONGFELLOW.

The Grey Goose remembered quite well the year that Jackanapes began
to walk, for it was the year that the speckled hen for the first time
in all her motherly life got out of patience when she was sitting. She
had been rather proud of the eggs--they are unusually large--but she
never felt quite comfortable on them; and whether it was because she
used to get cramp, and got off the nest, or because the season was
bad, or what, she never could tell, but every egg was addled but one,
and the one that did hatch gave her more trouble than any chick she
had ever reared.

It was a fine, downy, bright yellow little thing, but it had a
monstrous big nose and feet, and such an ungainly walk as she knew no
other instance of in her well-bred and high-stepping family. And as to
behavior, it was not that it was either quarrelsome or moping, but
simply unlike the rest. When the other chicks hopped and cheeped on
the Green all at their mother's feet, this solitary yellow one went
waddling off on its own responsibility, and do or cluck what the
spreckled hen would, it went to play in the pond.

It was off one day as usual, and the hen was fussing and fuming after
it, when the Postman, going to deliver a letter at Miss Jessamine's
door, was nearly knocked over by the good lady herself, who, bursting
out of the house with her cap just off and her bonnet just not on,
fell into his arms, crying--

"Baby! Baby! Jackanapes! Jackanapes!"

If the Postman loved anything on earth, he loved the Captain's
yellow-haired child, so propping Miss Jessamine against her own
door-post, he fol