It took a long time--it always does in such cases--ere Miss Barrington came to read this man aright. Indeed, the light of her own hopes had dazzled her, and she never saw him clearly till they were extinguished; but when the knowledge did come, it came trebled with compound interest, and she saw him in all that displayed his miserable selfishness; and although her brother, who found it hard to believe any one bad who had not been tried for a capital felony, would explain away many a meanness by saying, “It is just his way,--a way, and no more!” she spoke out fearlessly, if not very discreetly, and declared she detested him. Of course she averred it was his manners, his want of breeding, and his familiarity that displeased her. He might be an excellent creature,--perhaps he was; _that_ was nothing to her. All his moral qualities might have an interest for his friends; she was a mere acquaintance, and was only concerned for what related to his bearing in society. Then Walcheren was positively odious to her. Some little solace she felt at the thought that the expedition was a failure and inglorious; but when she listened to the fiftieth time-told tale of fever and ague, she would sigh, not for those who suffered, but over the one that escaped. It is a great blessing to men of uneventful lives and scant imagination when there is any one incident to which memory can refer unceasingly. Like some bold headland last seen at sea, it lives in the mind throughout the voyage. Such was this ill-starred expedition to the Major. It dignified his existence to himself, though his memory never soared above the most ordinary details and vulgar incidents. Thus he would maunder on for hours, telling how the ships sailed and parted company, and joined again; how the old “Brennus” mistook a signal and put back to Hull, and how the “Sarah Reeves,” his own transport, was sent after her. Then he grew picturesque about Flushing, as first seen through the dull fogs of the Scheldt, with village spires peeping through the heavy vapor, and the strange Dutch language, with its queer names for the vegetables and fruit brought by the boats alongside. “You won't believe me, Miss Dinah, but, as I sit here, the peaches was like little melons, and the cherries as big as walnuts.” “They made cherry-bounce out of them, I hope, sir,” said she, with a scornful smile. “No, indeed, ma'am,” replied he, dull to the sarcasm; “they ate them in a kind of sauce with roast-pig, and mighty good too!” But enough of the Major; and now a word, and only a word, for his companion, already alluded to by Barrington. Dr. Dill had been a poor “Dispensary Doctor” for some thirty years, with a small practice, and two or three grand patrons at some miles off, who employed him for the servants, or for the children in “mild cases,” and who even extended to him a sort of contemptuous courtesy that serves to make a proud man a bear, and an humble man a sycophant.