grass that the Gray Goose felt
ready to run away at the sight of her own neck, little Miss Jane Johnson
and her "particular friend" Clarinda sat under the big oak tree on the
Green, and Jane pinched Clarinda's little finger till she found that she
could keep a secret, and then she told her in confidence that she had
heard from Nurse and Jemima that Miss Jessamine's niece had been a very
naughty girl, and that that horrid wicked officer had come for her on
his black horse and carried her right away.

"Will she never come back?" asked Clarinda.

"Oh, no!" said Jane, decidedly. "Bony never brings people back."

"Not never no more?" sobbed Clarinda, for she was weak-minded, and could
not bear to think that Bony never, never let naughty people go home
again.

Next day Jane had heard more.

"He has taken her to a Green."

"A Goose Green?" asked Clarinda.

"No. A Gretna Green. Don't ask so many questions, child," said Jane,
who, having no more to tell, gave herself airs.

Jane was wrong on one point. Miss Jessamine's niece did come back, and
she and her husband were forgiven. The Gray Goose remembered it well; it
was Michaelmas-tide, the Michaelmas before the Michaelmas before the
Michaelmas--but, ga, ga! What does the date matter? It was autumn,
harvest-time, and everybody was so busy prophesying and praying about
the crops, that the young couple wandered through the lanes, and got
blackberries for Miss Jessamine's celebrated crab and blackberry jam,
and made guys of themselves with bryony wreaths, and not a soul troubled
his head about them, except the children and the Postman. The children
dogged the Black Captain's footsteps (his bubble reputation as an Ogre
having burst) clamoring for a ride on the black mare. And the Postman
would go 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 no