“We were in search of a little inn they had told us of, called the 'Fisherman's Home.' I conclude we have reached it at last, and you are the host, I take it?” Barrington bowed assent. “And these gentlemen are visitors here?” But without waiting for any reply,--difficult at all times, for he spoke with great rapidity and continual change of topic,--he now stooped down to whisper something to the sick man. “My friend thinks he'll do capitally now, and, if we leave him, that he'll soon drop asleep; so I vote we give him the chance.” Thus saying, he made a gesture for the others to leave, following them up as they went, almost like one enforcing an order. “If I am correct in my reading, you are a soldier, sir,” said Barrington, when they reached the outer room, “and this gentleman here is a brother officer,--Major M'Cor-mick.” “Full pay, eh?” “No, I am an old Walcheren man.” “Walcheren--Walcheren--why, that sounds like Malplaquet or Blenheim! Where the deuce was Walcheren? Did n't believe that there was an old tumbril of that affair to the fore still. You were all licked there, or you died of the ague, or jaundice? Oh, dummy whist, as I live! Who's the unlucky dog has got the dummy?--bad as Walcheren, by Jove! Is n't that a supper I see laid out there? Don't I smell Stilton from that room?” “If you 'll do us the honor to join us--” “That I will, and astonish you with an appetite too! We breakfasted at a beastly hole called Graigue, and tasted nothing since, except a few peaches I stole out of an old fellow's garden on the riverside,--'Old Dan the miser,' a country fellow called him.” “I have the honor to have afforded you the entertainment you speak of,” said M'Cormick, smarting with anger. “All right! The peaches were excellent,--would have been better if riper. I 'm afraid I smashed a window of yours; it was a stone I shied at a confounded dog,--a sort of terrier. Pickled onions and walnuts, by all that 's civilized! And so this is the 'Fisherman's Home,' and you the fisherman, eh? Well, why not show a light or a lantern over the door? Who the deuce is to know that this is a place of entertainment? We only guessed it at last.” “May I help you to some mutton?” said Barrington, more amused than put out by his guest's discursiveness. “By all means. But don't carve it that way; cut it lengthwise, as if it were the saddle, which it ought to have been. You must tell me where you got this sherry. I have tasted nothing like it for many a day,--real brown sherry. I suppose you know how they brown it? It's not done by sugar,--that's a vulgar error. It's done by boiling; they boil down so many butts and reduce them to about a fourth or a fifth. You haven't got any currant-jelly, have you? it is just as good with cold mutton as hot. And then it is the wine thus reduced they use for coloring matter. I got up all my sherry experiences on the spot.” “The wine you approve of has been in my cellar about five-and-forty years.”