"A letter for Mr. Buckley."

She sent a servant to undo the door; and going to the window again, she
inquired, trembling,--

"Do you know what the news is, orderly?"

"A great victory, my dear," said the man, mistaking her for one of the
servants. "Your master is all right. There's a letter from him inside
this one."

"And I daresay," Mrs. Buckley used to add, when she would tell this old
Waterloo story, as we called it, "that the orderly thought me a most
heartless domestic, for when I heard what he said, I burst out laughing
so loud, that old Mr. Buckley woke up to see what was the matter, and
when heard, he laughed as loud as I did."

So he came back to them again with fresh laurels, but Agnes never felt
safe, till she heard that the powers had determined to chain up her
BETE NOIR, Buonaparté, on a lonely rock in the Atlantic, that he might
disturb the world no more. Then at last she began to believe that peace
might be a reality, and a few months after Waterloo, to their delight
and exultation, she bore a noble boy.

And as we shall see more of this boy, probably, than of any one else in
these following pages, we will if you please appoint him hero, with all
the honours and emoluments thereunto pertaining. Perhaps when I have
finished, you will think him not so much of a hero after all. But at
all events you shall see how he is an honest upright gentleman, and in
these times, perhaps such a character is preferable to a hero.