“Certainly; the truth came out, never fear. Everything was made clear enough afterwards, though even now we don’t understand anything about it.... My poor apothecary couldn’t make out what it was all about. He only just felt for his liver, to see if they hadn’t squashed it to pieces; and as for me, when I came to my senses, I couldn’t make head or tail of the whole thing....”
“And how was it all explained?”
“Listen then; I’ll tell you all as it happened.... What they did with me, and where they put me, after that fight, I really can’t rightly tell you. I can only say one thing: I suffered enough from mortal fear, that’s true, but they didn’t do me any harm; I’m bound to say they treated me kindly and politely, and altogether like real gentlemen.... I thought it would be worse; but instead of that they soon began to look into it, and clear matters up.”
“That’s just what I say,” interposed the steward; “they should have looked into it first, and not go hitting people right and left.”
“You’re right there,” assented the narrator; “and it all turned out as you say.... When they called me up before the Member[[56]]—and there I was with my broken head all tied up in wet rags—he asked me—
“‘What’s the matter with you? Are you ill?’
“‘Why, your Excellency,’ says I, ‘they knocked me about so!’
“‘What!’ he cried; ‘how dare they? On what ground?’
“So I told him they said they’d got a paper.
“‘Oh, the scoundrels!’ and you should have heard him give it to them! He pitched into them hot and strong; and at last he turned round to me and said—