as in custody. So was my adversary. We were marched off toward
prison, one on each side of the watchman. Here was disaster,
here was a fine scheme gone to sudden destruction! I tried to
imagine what would happen when the master should discover that
it was I who had been fighting him; and what would happen if they
jailed us together in the general apartment for brawlers and petty
law-breakers, as was the custom; and what might--

Just then my antagonist turned his face around in my direction,
the freckled light from the watchman's tin lantern fell on it,
and, by George, he was the wrong man!

CHAPTER XXXVII

AN AWFUL PREDICAMENT

Sleep? It was impossible. It would naturally have been impossible
in that noisome cavern of a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken,
quarrelsome, and song-singing rapscallions. But the thing that
made sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed of, was my
racking impatience to get out of this place and find out the whole
size of what might have happened yonder in the slave-quarters
in consequence of that intolerable miscarriage of mine.

It was a long night, but the morning got around at last. I made
a full and frank explanation to the court. I said I was a slave,
the property of the great Earl Grip, who had arrived just after
dark at the Tabard inn in the village on the other side of the
water, and had stopped there over night, by compulsion, he being
taken deadly sick with a strange and sudden disorder. I had been
ordered to cross to the city in all haste and bring the best
physician; I was doing my best; naturally I was running with all
my might; the night was dark, I ran against this common person
here, who seized me by the throat and began to pummel me, although
I told him my errand, and implored him, for the sake of the great
earl my master's mortal peril--

The common person interrupted and said it was a lie; and was going
to explain how I rushed upon him and attacked him without a word--

"Silence, sirrah!" from the court. "Take him hence and give him
a few stripes whereby to teach him how to treat the servant of
a nobleman after a different fashion another time. Go!"

Then the court begged my pardon, and hoped I would not fail
to tell his lordship it was in no wise the court's fault that this
high-handed thing had happened. I said I would make it all right,
and so took my leave. Took it just in time, too; he was starting
to ask me why I didn't fetch out the