'Hear the fellow!' cried Captain Ward. 'Never did a thimble-rigging Political double as he is doing. I'll tell you what, Dr. Tobias Ticklemore, if you don't stop your atrocities, which are ten times worse than those of the Bulgarians,[1] for yours are not manufactured in nineteen cases out of twenty by the Russians, but are actually perpetrated before our very faces, and in the presence of those whose nerves ought to have been spared such terrible trials, I see, we shall be obliged to order a drumhead court-martial, and we'll call in Judge Lynch to act as provost-marshal, who always convicts, and not only convicts, but carries sentence into execution with such wonderful rapidity that the offender is suspended almost before he can look round; so be wise in time, Toby Tickle, or you'll get a tickler for Toby, that you may rely upon.' 'Oh,' replied the Doctor, 'if you really have the cruelty, the inhumanity, the barbarity, to threaten me with _sus. per col._, I fancy I must not hang fire lest I hang myself! Nevertheless, I think it due to myself to protest against the whole proceeding as illegal; there is a manifest flaw in the indictment. Your orthography is all wrong; I have neither three tails, nor many tails.' 'That's being hypocritical as well as hypercritical, Doctor, if not contumacious; spell it another way, and you have not three tales, but as many as you please.' 'Oh, oh!' said the Doctor, 'is that the plan you would adopt to get innocent people into trouble? but you won't take anything by your motion, for I shall presently show that, spell the words as you will, tails and tales are in truth equivalents. "T" is common to both words, and therefore goes for nothing, being equal to itself; and ales, at least in India and all tropical climates, is represented by ails; therefore, whichever way you spell the word, you gain nothing. For the second part of the word has been shown to be equivalent to the second part of the second word; and the first part of the first word having been found equal to the first part of the second word, the two wholes are found to be equal, Q.E.D.' 'Gentlemen,' said Captain Ward, 'what do you say to this--is it not intolerable? Is it not trifling, barefaced trifling, with authority? After the atrocities of which this man has been convicted, on the most unanswerable evidence, that of our own senses, for him to begin again in the same strain is clearly an aggravation of the original offence; to me it seems a case of unexampled audacity, deliberate and premeditated, with his logic, his mathematics, and his Q.E.D. I declare, I think there is nothing for it but to confirm the sentence reserved for consideration, and on account of the aggravation to order that the suspension be carried out in chains.'