A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain.

CHAPTER XXXVII

AN AWFUL PREDICAMENT
SLEEP? It was impossible. It would naturally
have been impossible in that noisome cavern of
a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken, quarrelsome,
and song-singing rapscallions. But the thing that
made sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed
of, was my racking impatience to get out of this
place and find out the whole size of what might have
happened yonder in the slave-quarters in consequence of that intolerable miscarriage of mine.
It was a long night, but the morning got around at
last. I made a full and frank explanation to the
court. I said I was a slave, the property of the
great Earl Grip, who had arrived just after dark
at the Tabard inn in the village on the other side
of the water, and had stopped there overnight, by
compulsion, he being taken deadly sick with a
strange and sudden disorder. I had been ordered to
cross to the city in all haste and bring the best
physician; I was doing my best; naturally I was
running with all my might; the night was dark, I
ran against this common person here, who seized me
by the throat and began to pummel me, although I
told him my errand, and implored him, for the sake
of the great earl my master's mortal peril369