The choice lay between expulsion and a public flogging, and when Douglas chose the latter, Dr. Watson resolved that the flogging should be of unusual severity. When the whole school was assembled, he made a very earnest and moving speech, deploring the causes that had given rise to the occasion, and showing how inevitable was the disgraceful result. Douglas, white and terrified, made ready in a trembling silence, then, turning his back on the tensely expectant audience, he faced his headmaster. Arthur Coburn, Douglas’s humanitarian house-master, was so upset by these preliminaries that for one moment he was tempted to leave the hall. Corporal punishment had always seemed to him a horrible thing, but never had it seemed quite so revolting as on this occasion. Yet he fought against the feeling. He knew that his chief was neither a stern nor a cruel man, and had been driven into the present position by the sheerly impudent persistence of Douglas’s disobedience. By way of alleviating as far as possible his own nervous distress, therefore, Coburn took up a position with his back to the rostrum, and faced the great crowd of just perceptibly intimidated boys. And waiting, much as Douglas’s mother had waited in shamed anxiety some nine years before, Coburn was amazed to see a sudden and incomprehensible change in the massed faces before him. The tensity, the look of half eager, half apprehensive expectation strangely relaxed. A wave of what looked like relief ran back in a long ripple of emotion from the front to the back of the many ranks of watching boys. In one instant everyone was wearing a faint smile of almost holy serenity. Coburn turned with a leap of astonishment and stared at Dr. Watson. And the smile he saw on the headmaster’s face outshone that on the faces of his audience as the sun outshines the moon. But no one save Dr. Watson saw the perfect radiance that flowed out from the face of Douglas Owen.... “I’m sorry, sir,” was all that Douglas said. Dr. Watson dropped his birch as if it had burnt him. His second address to the school was hesitating and apologetic. He tried to explain that when the clear signs of repentance and of reform were so evident as they were in the case of Owen, corporal punishment was superfluous and would be little short of criminal. Yet even Coburn, who so profoundly agreed with the principle expounded, found the explanation unsatisfying. He could not help feeling that Dr. Watson was concealing his true reason. Nevertheless, it is well to note that after this reprieve Douglas passed the remainder of his school-life without committing any other serious offence. He was only thirty-two when he came before the last and most terrible tribunal possible in our society.