strangely enough, that if there was one subject more than another
which never interested their minds, it was the art of war. To them
the art of enjoying good company in Overcombe Mill, the details of
the miller's household, the swarming of his bees, the number of his
chickens, and the fatness of his pigs, were matters of infinitely
greater concern.

The present writer, to whom this party has been described times out
of number by members of the Loveday family and other aged people now
passed away, can never enter the old living-room of Overcombe Mill
without beholding the genial scene through the mists of the seventy
or eighty years that intervene between then and now. First and
brightest to the eye are the dozen candles, scattered about
regardless of expense, and kept well snuffed by the miller, who
walks round the room at intervals of five minutes, snuffers in hand,
and nips each wick with great precision, and with something of an
executioner's grim look upon his face as he closes the snuffers upon
the neck of the candle. Next to the candle-light show the red and
blue coats and white breeches of the soldiers--nearly twenty of them
in all besides the ponderous Derriman--the head of the latter, and,
indeed, the heads of all who are standing up, being in dangerous
proximity to the black beams of the ceiling. There is not one among
them who would attach any meaning to 'Vittoria,' or gather from the
syllables 'Waterloo' the remotest idea of his own glory or death.
Next appears the correct and innocent Anne, little thinking what
things Time has in store for her at no great distance off. She
looks at Derriman with a half-uneasy smile as he clanks hither and
thither, and hopes he will not single her out again to hold a
private dialogue with--which, however, he does, irresistibly
attracted by the white muslin figure. She must, of course, look a