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232 overpowered; and they dragged him back to the triangles, as Dr. Sullivan turned to his brother-magistrate with a heightened colour and sparkling eyes.

“A hundred!” cried the doctor, in his most dictatorial voice.

“A hundred what?” asked Mr. Strachan.

“Lashes!” said the doctor, wiping his forehead with a red silk handkerchief. “You can’t give him less after this. I’d like to make it two! But we needn’t haul him in again to hear it. Just give the order out here.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Strachan, nervously. “I decline to give it at all.”

“Decline to order him another fifty for a bloodthirsty outrage like this?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You must have taken leave of your senses!” cried the domineering doctor. “Or is it that you sympathise with the man who felled my son?”

Mr. Strachan turned a deeper yellow.

“You know me better than that, Dr. Sullivan!” he cried hotly. “Sympathise with a convict! It’s not that at all. It’s because it’s irregular. I doubted whether it was a case for summary jurisdiction in the beginning. I know it isn’t now. And I’ll have no more to do with it.”

“You won’t? Then I will!” said Dr. Sullivan. “I’ll take the responsibility upon myself!”

“I won’t be a party to any further irregularity,” said Strachan, “and it’s a clear case for quarter sessions, if ever there was one. That’s my only point. The man deserves it, of course.”

Yet he retired into the justice-room and shut the door, but failed to shut out the rasping sound of Dr. Sullivan’s voice, exultantly doubling the sentence, and crying to the