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 proud of her reading--and the old soldier stood at attention behind her, with such a blending of pride and pity on his face as it was strange to see:-- "DOWNING STREET, "_June_ 22, 1815, 1 A.M." "That's one in the morning," gasped the Postman; "beg your pardon, mum." But though he apologized, he could not refrain from echoing here and there a weighty word. "Glorious victory,"--"Two hundred pieces of artillery,"--"Immense quantity of ammunition,"--and so forth. "The loss of the British Army upon this occasion has unfortunately been most severe. It had not been possible to make out a return of the killed and wounded when Major Percy left headquarters. The names of the officers killed and wounded, as far as they can be collected, are annexed. "I have the honor ----" "The list, aunt! Read the list!" "My love--my darling--let us go in and--" "No. Now! now!"