high, feverish exultation
appeared to boil in his veins, and he stood and smiled and smirked upon
the candle. Presently he lifted up his arm, snapped his fingers, and
fell to undress. As he did so, having once more forgot my presence, he
took back to his singing; and now I could hear the words, which were
these from the old song of the "Twa Corbies" endlessly repeated:

"And over his banes when they are bare
The wind sall blaw for evermair!"

I have said there was no music in the man. His strains had no logical
succession except in so far as they inclined a little to the minor mode;
but they exercised a rude potency upon the feelings, and followed the
words, and signified the feelings of the singer with barbaric fitness.
He took it first in the time and manner of a rant; presently this
ill-favoured gleefulness abated, he began to dwell upon the notes more
feelingly, and sank at last into a degree of maudlin pathos that was to
me scarce bearable. By equal steps, the original briskness of his acts
declined; and when he was stripped to his breeches, he sat on the
bedside and fell to whimpering. I know nothing less respectable than the
tears of drunkenness, and turned my back impatiently on this poor sight.

But he had started himself (I am to suppose) on that slippery descent of
self-pity; on the which, to a man unstrung by old sorrows and recent
potations, there is no arrest except exhaustion. His tears continued to
flow, and the man to sit there, three parts naked, in the cold air of
the chamber. I twitted myself alternately with inhumanity and
sentimental weakness, now half rising in my bed to interfere, now
reading myself lessons of indifference and courting slumber, until, upon
a sudden, the _quantum mutatus ab illo_ shot into my mind; and calling
to remembrance his old wisdom, constancy, and patience, I was overborne
with a pity almost approaching the passionate, not for my master alone,
but for the sons of man.

At this I leaped from my place, went over to his side and laid a hand on
his bare shoulder, which was cold as stone. He uncovered his face and
showed it me all swollen and begrutten[10] like a child's; and at the
sight my impatience partially revived.

"Think shame to yourself," said I. "This is bairnly conduct. I might
have been snivelling myself, if I had cared to swill my belly with wine.
But I went to my bed sober like a man. Come: get into yours, and have
done with this pitiable exhibition."