"I won't leave the room until you apologize to me, and if you don't apologize I'll punch your head." And Norman, all but naked as he was, began to bend up and down a very decent right arm and seemed well capable of executing his threat. "You should be more patient, sir," observed the President, waving towards Norman his gold-embroidered sleeve with a conciliating smile. "I assure you that it is to your advantage to obey us, and very much to your disadvantage to be rude. I admit that our demands, coming from total strangers, seem both impertinent and extravagant, but I assure you that they are necessary, and I should like to impress you with the earnestness of this apparently inane procedure. The Doctor only desires to see your muscles in motion. I assure you, your body is not a thing of which you need be ashamed. Should you disobey, you will be in serious danger." "I don't believe you. You dare not touch me. I am an Englishman," retorted Norman, refusing to be conciliated. "I am afraid," replied the President, ringing a little electric bell which was under his hand, "that we shall have to give you immediate proof of the earnestness of our intentions and our power to cause you a disadvantage." At once four guards entered the room, whom Norman from their uniform and faces recognized to be the very palace guards who had let him and the supposed beggar pass into the palace the day of their memorable visit. Unfortunately for Norman, they wore no longer the air of benevolent sleepiness which had characterized them on that former occasion; they were obviously wide awake and attentive to command. "Do you still refuse to perform the exercises demanded of you?" inquired the President. "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.