and consider how much of my misconduct was owing to the
excessive hospitality of Osbaldistone Hall."

"He shall be friends with thee, lad," cried the honest knight, in the
full effusion of his heart; "or d--n me, if I call him son more!--Why,
Rashie, dost stand there like a log? _Sorry for it_ is all a gentleman
can say, if he happens to do anything awry, especially over his claret. I
served in Hounslow, and should know something, I think, of affairs of
honour. Let me hear no more of this, and we'll go in a body and rummage
out the badger in Birkenwood-bank."

Rashleigh's face resembled, as I have already noticed, no other
countenance that I ever saw. But this singularity lay not only in the
features, but in the mode of changing their expression. Other
countenances, in altering from grief to joy, or from anger to
satisfaction, pass through some brief interval, ere the expression of the
predominant passion supersedes entirely that of its predecessor. There is
a sort of twilight, like that between the clearing up of the darkness and
the rising of the sun, while the swollen muscles subside, the dark eye
clears, the forehead relaxes and expands itself, and the whole
countenance loses its sterner shades, and becomes serene and placid.
Rashleigh's face exhibited none of these gradations, but changed almost
instantaneously from the expression of one passion to that of the
contrary. I can compare it to nothing but the sudden shifting of a scene
in the theatre, where, at the whistle of the prompter, a cavern
disappears, and a grove arises.

My attention was strongly arrested by this peculiarity on the present
occasion. At Rashleigh's first entrance, "black he stood as night!" With
the same inflexible countenance he heard my excuse and his father's
exhortation; and it was not until Sir Hildebrand had done speaking, that
the cloud cleared away at once, and he expressed, in the kindest and most
civil terms, his perfect satisfaction with the very handsome apology I
had offered.

"Indeed," he said, "I have so poor a brain myself, when I impose on it
the least burden beyond my usual three glasses, that I have only, like
honest Cassio, a very vague recollection of the confusion of last
night--remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly--a quarrel, but
nothing wherefore--So, my dear Cousin," he continued, shaking me kindly
by the hand, "conceive how much I am relieved by finding that I have to
receive an apology, instead of ha