Page:Life's Handicap - Kipling (1891).djvu/81

 'Ay, listen to our little man now, singin' an' shoutin' as tho' trouble had niver touched him. D' you remember when he went mad with the home-sickness?' said Mulvaney, recalling a never-to-be-forgotten season when Ortheris waded through the deep waters of affliction and behaved abominably 'But he's talkin' bitter truth, though. Eyah!

'My very worst frind from beginnin' to ind By the blood av a mouse was me

When I woke I saw Mulvaney, the night-dew gemming his moustache, leaning on his rifle at picket, lonely as Prometheus on his rock, with I know not what vultures tearing his liver.