And, finally, assuming the language of a generous and high-spirited man, he made it his particular request that this affair should be passed over without severe notice.

He alluded with delicacy to the predicament in which he himself stood with young Ravenswood, as having succeeded in the long train of litigation by which the fortunes of that noble house had been so much reduced, and confessed it would be most peculiarly acceptable to his own feelings, could he find in some sort to counterbalance the disadvantages which he had occasioned the family, though only in the prosecution of his just and lawful rights.

He therefore made it his particular and personal request that the matter should have no farther consequences, an insinuated a desire that he himself should have the merit of having put a stop to it by his favourable report and intercession.

It was particularly remarkable that, contrary to his uniform practice, he made no special communication to Lady Ashton upon the subject of the tumult; and although he mentioned the alarm which Lucy had received from one of the wild cattle, yet he gave no detailed account of an incident so interesting and terrible.
There was much surprise among Sir William Ashton's political friends and colleagues on receiving letters of a tenor so unexpected.

On comparing notes together, one smiled, one put up his eyebrows, a third nodded acquiescence in the general wonder, and a fourth asked if they were sure these were ALL the letters the Lord Keeper had written on the subject.
"It runs strangely in my mind, my lords, that none of these advices contain the root of the matter." But no secret letters of a contrary nature had been received, although the question seemed to imply the possibility of their existence.
"Well," said an old grey-headed statesman, who had contrived, by shifting and trimming, to maintain his post at the steerage through all the changes of course which the vessel had held for thirty years, "I thought Sir William would hae verified the auld Scottish saying, 'As soon comes the lamb's skin to market as the auld tup's'." "We must please him after his own fashion," said another, "though it be an unlooked-for one." "A wilful man maun hae his way," answered the old counsellor.
"The Keeper will rue this before year and day are out," said a third; "the Master of Ravenswood is the lad to wind him a pirn." "Why, what would you do, my lords, with the poor young fellow ?" said a noble Marquis present.