"I shan't mind p-p-paying a bit," said the excellent young nobleman; "it's been such r-r-rare f-f-fun." Rare fun indeed! The miserable Hazlet, swilled with unwonted draughts, lay brutally comatose in a chair. His head rolled from side to side, his body and arms hung helpless and disjointed, his eyelids dropped--he was completely unconscious, and more than fulfilled the conditions of being "roaring drunk!" Now for some jolly amusement--the opportunity's too good to be lost! What exhilaration there is on seeing a human soul imbruted and grovelling hopelessly in the dirt or rather to have a body before you, _without_ a soul for the time being--a coarse animal mass, swinish as those whom the wand of Circe smote, but with the human intelligence quenched besides, and the charactery of reason wiped away. Here, some ochre and lamp-black, quick! There--plaster it well about the whiskers and eyelids, and put a few patches on the hair! Magnificent!--he looks like a Choctaw in his war-paint, after drinking fire-water. Screams of irrepressible laughter--almost as ghastly, (if the cause of them be considered), as those that might have sounded round a witch's cauldron over diabolical orgies--accompanied the whole proceeding. So loud were they that all the men on the stair-case heard them, and fully expected the immediate apparition of some bulldog, dean, or proctor. It was nobody's affair, however, but Bruce's, and he must do as he liked. Suton, who "kept" near Bruce, was one of those whom the uproar puzzled and disturbed, as he sat down with sober pleasure to his evening's work. His window was opposite Bruce's, and across the narrow road he heard distinctly most of what was said. The perpetual and noisy repetition of Hazlet's name perplexed him extremely, and at last he could have no doubt that they were making Hazlet drunk, and then painting him; nor was it less clear that many of them were themselves half intoxicated.