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, Buonaparte, 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.

Old Marmaduke had been long failing, and two years after this he had
taken to his bed, never to leave it again alive. And one day when the
son and heir was rolling and crowing on his grandfather's bed, and
Agnes was sewing at the window, and James was tying a fly by the
bedside, under the old man's directions; he drew the child towards him,
and beckoning Agnes from the window spoke thus:--

"My children, I shan't be long with you, and I must be the last of the
Buckleys that die at Clere. Nay, I mean it, James; listen carefully to
me: when I go, the house and park must go with me. We are very poor as
you well know, and you will be doing injustice to this boy if you hang
on here in this useless tumble-down old palace, without money enough to
keep up your position in the county. You are still young, and it would
be hard for you to break up old associations. It got too hard for me
lately, though at one time I meant to do it. The land and the house are
the worst investment you can have for your money, and if you sell, a
man like you may