"Yes," said Norman, stubbornly.
"Haul him up," said the President quietly, but with anger in his eyes.
Norman found his wrists seized before he could make the slightest resistance, and he was swung up on to the back of the tallest of the guards.
"Do you refuse also to apologize?" said the Doctor.
"Yes."
"Let him go away quietly," said the President.
"Why should we hurt him? We cannot expect him to understand us."
"I insist on an apology. I will not leave the room without it," said Norman. "As for you, you soppy little fool...."
His bewilderment rapidly gave place to alarm. He wished he had not been quite so rude to the President, who, after all, had been polite. Still, he hoped he might be simply undergoing some form of Test by Verification, like the legendary Masonic hot poker. At least, I suppose it is legendary. But when from the tail of his eye he beheld from his undignified perch a horsewhip in the hands of one of the guards, he tried to remember the sufferings of his days in the village school at Blaindon, which, after all, were not of such remote antiquity.
He wondered, like the schoolboy, how many? If, that is, he really was to suffer after all.