“I beg your pardon, Barnes,” Clive said, blushing deeply, “and I’m very sorry indeed for what passed; I threw it.” The Colonel, who had been listening with a queer expression of wonder and doubt on his face, here interrupted Mr. Barnes. “It was Clive that—that spilled the wine over you last night,” Thomas Newcome said; “the young rascal had drunk a great deal too much wine, and had neither the use of his head nor his hands, and this morning I have given him a lecture, and he has come to ask your pardon for his clumsiness; and if you have forgotten your share in the night’s transaction, I hope you have forgotten his, and will accept his hand and his apology.” “Apology: There’s no apology,” cries Barnes, holding out a couple of fingers of his hand, but looking towards the Colonel. “I don’t know what happened any more than the dead. Did we have a row? Were there any glasses broken? The best way in such cases is to sweep ’em up. We can’t mend them.” The Colonel said gravely—“that he was thankful to find that the disturbance of the night before had no worse result.” He pulled the tail of Clive’s coat, when that unlucky young blunderer was about to trouble his cousin with indiscreet questions or explanations, and checked his talk. “The other night you saw an old man in drink, my boy,” he said, “and to what shame and degradation the old wretch had brought himself. Wine has given you a warning too, which I hope you will remember all your life; no one has seen me the worse for drink these forty years, and I hope both you young gentlemen will take counsel by an old soldier, who fully preaches what he practises, and beseeches you to beware of the bottle.”