He shuddered, and said to himself, “Alack, they are not gone free, as I had thought. To think that such as these should know the lash!--in England! Ay, there’s the shame of it--not in Heathennesse, Christian England! They will be scourged; and I, whom they have comforted and kindly entreated, must look on and see the great wrong done; it is strange, so strange, that I, the very source of power in this broad realm, am helpless to protect them.