Captain ever since, which showed how hardened he was, and that
nobody but Bonaparte himself could be expected to do him any good.

But those were "trying times." It was bad enough when the pickle of a
large and respectable family cried for the Black Captain; when it came
to the little Miss Jessamine crying for him, one felt that the sooner
the French landed and had done with it, the better.

The big Miss Jessamine's objection to him was that he was a soldier; and
this prejudice was shared by all the Green. "A soldier," as the speaker
from the town had observed, "is a bloodthirsty, unsettled sort of a
rascal, that the peaceable, home-loving, bread-winning citizen can never
conscientiously look on as a brother till he has beaten his sword into a
ploughshare and his spear into a pruning-hook."

On the other hand, there was some truth in what the Postman (an old
soldier) said in reply,--that the sword has to cut a way for us out of
many a scrape into which our bread-winners get us when they drive their
ploughshares into fallows that don't belong to them. Indeed, whilst our
most peaceful citizens were prosperous chiefly by means of cotton, of
sugar, and of the rise and fall of the money-market (not to speak of
such salable matters as opium, firearms, and "black ivory"),
disturbances were apt to arise in India, Africa, and other outlandish
parts, where the fathers of our domestic race were making fortunes for
their families. And for that matter, even on the Green, we did not wish
the military to leave us in the lurch, so long as there was any fear
that the French were coming.[3]

To let the Black Captain have little Miss Jessamine, however, was
another matter. Her aunt would not hear of it; and then, to crown all,
it appeared that the Captain's father did not think the young lady good
enough for his son. Never was any affair more clearly brought to a
conclusion.

But those were "trying times"; and one moonlight night, when the Gray
Goose was sound asleep upon one leg, the Green was rudely shaken under
her by the thud of a horse's feet. "Ga, ga!" said she, putting down the
other leg and running away.

By the time she returned to her place not a thing was to be seen or
heard. The horse had passed like a shot. But next day there was hurrying
and scurrying and cackling at a very early hour, all about the white
house with the black beams, where Miss Jessamine lived. And when the sun
was so low and the shadows so long on the