The magistrate laughed a harsh laugh of successful disagreeableness.
‘All right,’ said he, ‘where’s your licence? You come with me. A week or two in prison.’
I don’t believe now he could have done it, but we all thought then he could and would, what’s more.
So H. O. began to cry, but Noel spoke up. His teeth were chattering yet he spoke up like a man.
He said, ‘You don’t know us. You’ve no right not to believe us till you’ve found us out in a lie. We don’t tell lies. You ask Albert’s uncle if we do.’
‘Hold your tongue,’ said the White-Whiskered. But Noel’s blood was up.
‘If you do put us in prison without being sure,’ he said, trembling more and more, ‘you are a horrible tyrant like Caligula, and Herod, or Nero, and the Spanish Inquisition, and I will write a poem about it in prison,
