was making a speech to another gathering not thirty steps away, in fulsome laudation of “our glorious British liberties!”
I was boiling. I had forgotten I was a plebeian, I was remembering I was a man. Cost what it might, I would mount that rostrum and —
Click! the king and I were handcuffed together! Our companions, those servants, had done it; my lord Grip stood looking on. The king burst out in a fury, and said:
“What meaneth this ill-mannered jest?”
My lord merely said to his head miscreant, coolly:
“Put up the slaves and sell them!”
Slaves! The word had a new sound — and how unspeakably awful!