I should feel compelled to commit you to another Court, and your lightest punishment would be a term in the chain-gang, even if you were not sent straight away to Norfolk Island. It is your good fortune, however, to have been assigned to a humane and merciful master, who has spoken for you as I am bound to say I should not have done in his place. He has magnanimously made the most of the one slender point that might be urged in your favour. He has begged me to deal with you here and now. He is generously anxious to give you another chance, of which, for your own good, I would exhort you to take grateful advantage. Meanwhile, you have not me to thank, but Dr. Sullivan entirely, for the ridiculously inadequate punishment which I am about to order you. You will be taken into the yard, and you will receive fifty lashes with the cat-o’-nine-tails.”
At these words Tom turned very white, and opened his lips as if to speak, but shut them tight without a syllable. His dogged eyes gleamed, his handcuffs rattled, and his leg-irons clanked together as the constables took him by either arm and led him, without a murmur, from the room.
“Did I say too much?” asked Mr. Strachan, biting at a cheroot, when the magistrates were left alone.
“Not one word,” replied the doctor, cordially. “I am infinitely obliged to you for saying what you did—for the constables’ benefit, particularly. They seemed to see nothing wrong.”
Mr. Strachan shook his head “It was distinctly irregular, doctor. A clearer case for quarter sessions I have never heard.”
