The excitement about Flora MacIvor and the gentle Rose, and the keen disappointment of Flora’s partisans who had all along hoped against hope that she would relent, kept drowsiness at bay. This was not the chief point of interest in the book perhaps, but those young women regarded it from that point of view. I tell this chiefly as an illustration of the manner in which Miss Brown and Kirsteen managed their affairs. But as a matter of fact Miss Jean often read aloud when there was no such urgent call for it. She read the newspapers to the girls when there was any news of interest. She had read to them everything about Waterloo, and all the despatches and the descriptions of the field, and anecdotes about the battle, as they came out bit by bit in the small square newspaper of eight pages, which was all that then represented the mighty _Times_. One of the young women lost a brother in that battle. This made the little community feel that all had something special to do with it, and brought tears into every eye, and justified them in shaking all their heads over the cost of blood by which the great victory had been achieved, even in the midst of their enjoyment of the illuminations and all the stir and quickened life of town at that great moment. It was long after Waterloo, however, when the incident I am about to record occurred. Years had passed, and the newspapers were no longer so exciting as in those days of the Peninsula, when a fight or a victory might be always looked for. War died out from among the items of news, and the long calm, which ended only after the Great Exhibition of 1851 had made as people thought an end of all possibility of fighting, had begun--people had ceased to be afraid of the newspaper, and the tidings it might bring. It is true there was always fighting going on in India more or less, little battles now and then, skirmishes, expeditions of which the world did not know very much, but in which, without any demonstration, a few brave lives would end from time to time, and hearts break quietly at home, all to the increase and consideration of our great Indian territory, and the greatness of Great Britain in that empire upon which the sun never sets.