The Master of Man: The Story of a Sin

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE JUDGE AND THE MAN

"Helloa! Glad to see you about again. Fenella has gone off to the south of the island somewhere, but she'll be home for luncheon. Take a cigar? No? Not smoking yet? I must anyway."

"I've come to see you on a serious matter, Sir," said Stowell—he felt his lips trembling.

"So?"

The Governor glanced up quickly, charged his pipe and then settled himself to listen.

"You will remember the story I told you—about the man who had promised to marry a girl and then fallen in love with somebody else?"

"Perfectly."

Stowell paused a moment. His lips became pale and his hands contracted.

"Well?"

"That was my own story, Sir."

There was another moment of silence. Stowell had expected an exclamation of surprise, a clang of astonishment, but the Governor's face was still to the fire and the only sound he made was the swivelling of the pipe between his teeth.

"You advised me to break off the engagement and I did so."

"What was the result?"

"The girl was relieved."

"Relieved?"

"Yes, because she, too, had in the meantime fallen in love with somebody else—my friend Gell."

"How fortunate!"

"It seemed so at first. I thought Providence had stepped in to help her out. But Fate has kept a terrible reckoning, Sir."

"What has happened?"

"The girl has committed a crime. She is in Castle Rushen awaiting her trial for the murder of her new-born child."

"The woman Collister?"

"Yes. And now I'm a Judge and in ordinary course it is my duty to try her."

There was another period of silence, broken only by the rapid puffing of the Governor's pipe.

"But that's not all, Sir. Being in this frightful position everything is tempting me to corrupt Justice. First, my natural desire to influence the trial in favour of the girl—perhaps to get her off altogether. Next, pity for her poor mother who has been pleading for mercy. Then, friendship for Gell who has been begging me to try the case because the old Statute is severe and my colleague cruel. And last of all the step-father of the girl who has been trying to intimidate me."

"Well?"

"I think you will see it is impossible for me to sit on a case in which my private interest and my public duty conflict—utterly impossible. It would be against all usage, all justice."

The Governor removed his pipe. His face had become cold and hard. "You speak of your colleague—have you done anything with him?"

"Yes. I've asked him to sit instead of me."

"What if he cannot?"

"Then I will ask you, Sir, to send for another Judge from across the water."

Stowell had struggled through to the end, although perspiration had been breaking out on his forehead. When he had finished the Governor sat for some time without speaking.

Obscure motives were operating within him. In the depths of his mind (scarcely known to himself) he was asking himself, "How will all this, if I allow it to go farther, affect Fenella? Will it stop her marriage, disturb her happiness, destroy her life?" But on the surface of his mind he was only aware of considerations of public welfare. He was irritated by what had occurred. It was an impediment in his path which he wished to kick out of the way.

He rose, laid his pipe on the mantelpiece, and standing with his back to the fire and his hands behind him, his chin firm and his mouth set hard, he said, with sudden energy,

"Now listen to me. I always knew that was your own story."

"Yes?"

"What I did not know was that any harm had been done. Did you?"

"Indeed no."

"Did the girl?"

"It is incredible."

"Do you know that she has killed her child?"

"Not certainly. She denies it, and the evidence is not too convincing."

"Do you know that she ever had a child?"

"No .... I can't say .... She denies that also, and the medical testimony is far from conclusive."

"Do you know—are you satisfied—that if she had a child, and killed it, the child was yours?"

Stowell, with a gulp, stammered something about Bessie having been a good girl before he met her.

"But do you know anything?"

"Well, no .... I can't say...."

"Then, good heavens, what are you thinking about? Knowing nothing, nothing really, you are acting, and asking me to act, on a cloud of conjectures. I'll not do it."

Stowell drew his breath with a gasp of relief. It was just as if he had been living for days in the stuffy atmosphere of a sealed room and somebody had broken open a window. His head was down; the Governor touched his shoulder.

"My friend, you are doing that poor girl a cruel injustice."

Stowell was startled and looked up.

"In your own mind you are finding her guilty before she has been tried."

"Ah!"

"You are doing yourself an injustice, too. Even if the girl committed this crime—I say if—you are not responsible for it."

Stowell began to stammer again. "I .... I did wrong in the first instance, Sir, and nothing but wrong...."

But the Governor said sharply, "Of course you did wrong in the first instance. But that has nothing to do with the wrong which she (if she is guilty) has done since. It can't be supposed that you had any sympathy with her act, can it?"

"God forbid!"

"Did you desert her? Did you leave her to the mercy of the world? Has she ever been in want? Was she in any danger of being unable to provide for her offspring when it came?"

"No .... I cannot say...."

"Then what folly to think you are responsible for what she did in taking the life of her child—if she did take it. No, other facts and motives operated with the girl. And whatever those facts and motives were, you, so far as I can see, had nothing to do with them—nothing whatever."

Stowell's pulse was beating high. He tried to say something about his moral responsibility, but again the Governor cut him short.

"Your moral responsibility!" he said, with a ring of sarcasm. "I'm sick of this sentimental talk about moral responsibility—man's responsibility for the conduct of woman, and all the rest of it. The person who commits the crime is the criminal—that's the only foundation of law and order."

"Then you think, Sir," said Stowell, "that since I...."

"I think," said the Governor, "that the whole thing is unfortunate, damnably unfortunate, but since you are not responsible for the girl's crime, if she committed a crime at all, and knew nothing about it, and have no sympathy with it, you ought to go on doing your duty. Why shouldn't you? .... Interested? Of course you are interested. In a little community like this a Judge is nearly always interested. Isn't that what your Deemster's oath is intended to provide for?"

Stowell muttered something about being afraid, and again the Governor caught him up.

"Afraid? What are you afraid of? The public? Doesn't it occur to you that the only risk you run in that direction is not the risk of sitting on this case but of not sitting on it? There must be people who have seen you coming here this morning, and if you are not in Court on the appointed day, aren't they likely to ask why?"

"There's Gell...."

"Certainly there's Gell .... When the marriage was broken off you didn't tell him anything, did you?"

Stowell shook his head. "How could I?"

"Yes, how could you? And now he wishes you to sit, and, if you don't, isn't he likely to suspect the reason?"

"There .... there's Baldromma."

"That wind-bag! Likely to make a cry against the administration of justice, is he? Well, the surest way to squelch such people is to walk over them."

"There's the girl herself."

"Of course, there's the girl herself. But if she is guilty and has held her tongue thus far, she'll probably continue to do so."

The Governor made a turn across the room and then drew up sharply.

"There's myself, too. I suppose I deserve some consideration?"

"Indeed yes."

"Then go on with your duty—that's all I ask of you."

With a thrill of relief Stowell rose to go. But oh, misery of the heart, he had kept his most searching objection to the last.

"There is somebody else, your Excellency."

"Who else?" asked the Governor, laying down the pipe he had taken up.

"I hate to mention her in this connection—Fenella."

"Fenella? Why, what on earth has Fenella...."

And then Stowell told him.

Having interested herself in this case, Fenella was hunting down the guilty man that he might be exposed and punished—punished by public obloquy if he could not be punished by law.

"If she finds him before the trial how can I possibly sit? Whatever happens it will be coloured by her knowledge of the truth. If the girl is acquitted she will think I have helped her to escape punishment in order to salve my conscience or cover my share in her crime. And if she is condemned what happiness can there be for either of us after that?"

He had spoken with emotion, but the Governor, who had recovered from his surprise, replied impatiently,

"Aren't you crossing the bridge before you come to the river?"

Stowell made no answer, and at the next moment there was the sound of carriage wheels coming up the drive.

"It's Fenella," said the Governor, looking out of the window. "I'll ask you to say nothing to her about the subject of our conversation. And listen" (he was re-lighting his pipe and puffing at it with lips that smacked angrily; Stowell's hand was on the door), "don't let my girl make a damned fool of you."

II

"Victor, I have something to tell you," said Fenella.

"Yes?"

They were in the library. She was looking feverish; he was feeling ashamed, embarrassed and afraid.

"I have found out who was the friend of that poor girl."

He gazed at her without speaking.

"It will be a great shock to you—it was Alick Gell."

"No, no!"

"I'm sorry, dear. I knew you would be unable to believe it. But it's true—terribly true."

Mrs. Quayle, the evening before, had said very little. Nobody had called to see the girl while she stayed at her house, and nobody had come to take her away. She, herself, had seen her off by the train, and all the girl had told her was that she was going to a school at Derby-Haven.

"But that was enough for me," said Fenella. "This morning I went down to Derby-Haven and found there was only one school there. It is kept by two maiden ladies named Brown. Simple old things, very timid and old-fashioned. They were thrown into terrible commotion by my call, and having read the reports in the newspapers they were at first afraid to say anything. But after I had promised that they should not be mixed up in the matter in any way, I got them to speak. Mr. Alick Gell had brought the girl to their house. He had paid for her, and they had always looked upon him as her intended husband. So it's a certainty, you see—a shocking certainty."

Stowell was breathless.

"But my dear Fenella," he said, "this is a mistake. You are drawing a false inference...."

But Fenella only shook her head.

"Yes. I knew your loyalty to your friend would compel you to say so. But what do you think? I have since found that the fact is common knowledge."

Returning in the train she had occupied a compartment with two men—the strangest looking creatures she had ever seen in a first-class carriage. One of them turned out to be the girl's stepfather and the other a member of the House of Keys.

"Cæsar Qualtrough?"

"Cæsar? Yes, that was the name. They talked about the forthcoming trial and didn't seem to mind my hearing them—perhaps wished me to. The step-father (he spoke as if the whole case had been got up to disgrace him) was complaining that he had not been called by either side. But no matter, he would force himself upon the Court and expose the real criminal—the Speaker's son. It was all a trick. But it should not succeed. He would put the saddle on the right horse, he would. And then they talked about you."

"What .... what about me?"

"That the report of your being too ill to sit was a lie. You were not ill at all and never had been—the step-father knew better. You were merely shirking your duty to save your friend in some way. But that trick shouldn't succeed either, or the people should know what Judges in the Isle of Man were. So you see you must sit on this case, dear—if you are fit for it. You can't afford to have it said that you have sacrificed your duty as a Judge to your personal interests. At your first Court, too."

Stowell was in torture. In spite of the Governor's warning, an almost overpowering impulse came to him to confess, to make a clean breast of everything, there and then, and once for all.

"Fenella," he began (his breath was coming and going in gusts), "who knows if the guilty man is Gell? It may be somebody else."

"Who else can it be?"

He tried to say "It is I," but hesitated—he could not shatter in a word the whole world he lived in. At the next moment she was praising his fidelity, which would not allow him to think ill of his life-long friend.

"But he has no such delicacy," she said. "Knowing what he knows he is still going to defend the girl, and that's equal to defending himself, isn't it? How shocking!"

Stowell's shame at his moral cowardice reached the point of abasement, and he dropped his head. Then, carried away by her own pleading, Fenella put her arms about his neck, tenderly and caressingly, and told him she knew well what a hard thing she was asking him to do—to sit in judgment on his friend also, for that was what it would come to. But she would love him for ever if he would do it. It would be like the crown of all her hopes, the fulfilment of all she had worked for, if in some way (he would know best how) a poor girl who had sinned and suffered should have mercy shown to her, and not be left alone in her shame, but have the partner of her sin (no matter who he was or how near he came) standing side by side with her.

There was a moment of silence. Stowell was like a man groping in the dark of a black midnight. At length a light seemed to dawn on him. If he sat on this case he could save an innocent man at all events.

"You will sit, will you not?"

"Yes."

And then she kissed him.

III

Back at Ballamoar, Stowell found the Deemster's clerk waiting for him.

It had taken Joshua three days to see Deemster Taubman, and when at length he was admitted to the big man's presence he had found him in bed, with his shaggy head and unshaven face on the pillow and his lower extremities through the legs of a cane-bottomed chair which supported his bed-clothes.

"What? What's that?" he had roared. "Sit at the General Gaol? Go back to your master and tell him I'm lying here in the tortures of the damned, not able to put a foot to the ground."

Stowell drew a long breath. Fate had spoken its last word! It was now certain that he must sit on the case of Bessie Collister.

His spirits rose and he began to see things more clearly. Had he not exaggerated his own importance in this affair? He had been thinking of his part in the forthcoming trial as if the issue of Bessie's fate depended upon him. But not so. It depended upon the Jury. Guilty or not Guilty,—he had nothing to do with that. Therefore, in the deeper sense, Bessie would not be tried by him at all. Why had he been frightening himself?

Had a Judge, then, no power, no voice, no influence? Thank God, yes! It was for the Judge to direct the jury on questions of law, to see that they had a right understanding of it and that their verdict corresponded with the evidence. What an important function—especially in a case like this! What a mercy old Taubman was unable to sit on it!

He thought again of Bessie's position. Pitiful, most pitiful! But the law was no Juggernaut, intended to crush the life out of a poor unfortunate girl. Mercifully administered it was rather her Sanctuary to which she might fly for refuge. And it should be mercifully administered.

Why not? Good heavens, why not? What wrong would it be to temper Justice with mercy—even to strain the law a little in the prisoner's favour? No one but himself would know. And if it were suspected that he was showing favour to the prisoner, people would consider him deserving of praise rather than censure for trying to snatch a young and helpless creature from the clutches of a cruel old Statute.

Besides, was it not one of the higher traditions of the bench that the Judge was first Counsel for the accused? Judges had not always acted on that principle. Some of them, in times past, had hunted their wretched prisoners gallowswards with gibes. Taubman was still like that. He thought sympathy with such women as Bessie Collister was sentimental weakness, that to deal mercifully with them was to encourage them, and thereby do a wrong to public morality.

"God bless me, yes! I know Taubman," he told himself.

Then he thought of Gell. Whatever Bessie might be, Gell was innocent, and after the girl herself the greatest sufferer. Should he suffer further from an unfounded suspicion? God forbid! It would be his duty as Judge to see that no blustering person in Court bellowed accusations which, once out, might stick to an innocent man for the rest of his natural life.

After that he thought of himself. The only risk he ran was from Bessie's despair. If Gell were falsely accused she might break silence and tell the truth to save him. What a vista! Bessie, Gell, himself, Fenella! But no, that should not be! The law was no thumb-screw; a law-court was no torture-chamber. It would be his duty as Judge to protect the girl against any form of legal provocation.

Last of all, with a thrill of the heart, he thought of Fenella. She had drawn him on, constrained and compelled him to promise to sit on Bessie's case. But she had only wished, out of the greatness of her pity, to see that the poor girl should have a just trial. She should too! It would be his duty as Judge to see to that.

"Good Lord, yes! And what a mercy the case is not coming before Taubman."

Thus in the scorching fire of his temptation he tried to stand erect in the belief that he had sunk himself in his high office—that he was about to become the champion and first servant of Justice. But well he knew in his secret heart that in the fierce struggle which had been going on within him between the Judge and the Man, the Man had conquered.

During the next two days he worked day and night in the library, looking up authorities and verifying references. On the third day he set out in his car for Castletown. Janet saw him off in the mist of early morning. He was very pale; he had eaten scarcely any breakfast. She looked anxiously after him until he disappeared behind the trees. There was the odour of fresh earth in the air and the rooks were calling. It was like an echo from the past.

When he arrived at Castle Rushen there was a crowd at the gate, and all hats were off to him, as they had been to his father, when he passed through the Judge's private entrance.

Inside the courtyard, where the steps go up to the public part of the Court-house, there was another crowd and a certain commotion. The police were pushing back a tumultuous person who in a raucous voice was demanding to be admitted although the place was full.

It was Dan Baldromma.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE TRIAL

For a good hour before the arrival of the Deemster, Castle Rushen had been full of activity. In the Court-house itself, warm with sunshine from the lantern light, Robbie Stephen, the chief Coroner of the island, who looked like a shaggy old sheep-dog, had been selecting candidates for the Jury-box.

Seventy-two of them had been summoned, six from each of twelve parishes, and now he was reducing the number to thirty-two, twelve for the Jury and twenty more to meet the contingency of arbitrary challenging.

Everybody claimed exemption, but the Coroner listened to none. Standing back to the empty bench, swelling with importance and with his seventy-two men huddled together like sheep at one side of the chamber, he called them out at his discretion and with a wave of the hand passed them over to the other side to wait for the trial.

"Now, then, Willie Kinnish, thou'rt a good man; over with thee." "No, no, Mr. Stephen, you must excuse me to-day, Sir." "Tut, tut! You Maughold men haven't served on a jury these seven years." "But I have fifty head of sheep going to Ramsey mart this morning, and what's to pay my half year's rent if I'm not there to sell them?" "Chut, man! Lave that to herself. She's thy better half, isn't she?"

Meantime, in the chill corridors underground the jailer and his turnkey were rattling their keys, opening the doors of the cells and shouting to the prisoners to make ready for the Court.

"Patrick Kelly! Charles Quiggin! Nancy Kegeen! John Corlett! Cæsar Crow! Robert Quine! Elizabeth Corteen!"

Hearing her name called, Bessie, having no fear, got up from her plank bed, and when Mrs. Mylrea, the woman warder, with her short, loud, difficult breathing, brought back her cloak and fur hat, she put them on leisurely.

"Quick, girl!" said the warder. "You don't want to keep the Dempster waiting, do you?"

Bessie laughed, but made no answer. At the next moment she was in the darkness of the corridor, walking at the end of a short procession of other prisoners, and at the next she was drawn up, with her prison companions, into the blinding sunlight of a little paved quadrangle which was surrounded by high walls and had the sound of the sea coming down into it from the free world outside.

By this time the Court-house upstairs was in a state of yet greater activity. The thirty-two possible jurymen, having reconciled themselves to being "trapped," were standing under the jury-box, talking of the weather which was bringing the crops on rapidly and would increase the price of early potatoes. Inspectors of police were bustling about; Joshua Scarff was laying a green portfolio with paper, pens and ink, on the bench in front of the Deemster's scarlet armchair, and a number of advocates were coming in laughing by a door which communicated with their room off the ramparts.

The last of the advocates to enter was Alick Gell. He took a seat immediately in front of the empty dock, looking pale and worn and scarcely able to hold the papers which he carried in his nervous hands. A little later the Attorney-General, who was to prosecute for the Crown, came in with a grave face, followed by old Hudgeon, his junior, with a sour one. And shortly before eleven (the hour appointed for the beginning of the trial) a lady was brought by an Inspector from the door to the Judge's room and seated beside Gell in front of the dock. It was Fenella.

Then the outer doors to the court-yard were thrown open and the public admitted. They rushed and tore their way into the Court-house, men and women together, talking and laughing loudly. The big clock in the Castle tower was heard to strike, and the Inspector, standing near the dais, cried in a loud voice,

"Silence in Court!"

The babel of voice subsided and everybody rose who had been seated. Then the Court came in and took their seats on the bench of judgment—the Governor in his soldier's uniform, and Stowell and the Clerk of the Rolls in their Judges' wigs and gowns.

It was remarked that the new Deemster looked ill and almost old. A wave of sympathy went out to him from the first. It was whispered among the spectators that he had come straight from a sick-bed, and that the Governor insisted on his presence, saying he must have him "dead or alive."

"Coroner, fence the Court," said the Governor, and then old Stephen, who had already taken his place in the Coroner's box, raising the pitch of his voice, recited the ancient formula:

"I do hereby fence this Court in the name of our Sovereign Lord the King. I charge that no person shall quarrel, bawl or molest the audience, that all persons shall answer to their names when called. I charge this audience to witness that this Court is fenced; I charge this audience to witness that this Court is fenced; I charge this whole audience to witness that this Court is fenced."

Everybody knew that it was for the Deemster to speak next, but for a sensible moment he did not do so. Then he said, almost beneath his breath,

"Let the prisoners be brought in."

In the continued silence there came the sound of bustle outside, with the patter of feet on the pavement below, and then a shuffling of steps on the stairs. The prisoners were coming up, but the police had difficulty in clearing a passage for them. The voice of the jailer, Tommy Vondy, was heard to cry, "Make way!" There was a period of waiting. At one moment the people in court caught the sound from the staircase of a scarcely believable thing—the laugh of a woman? Who could she be?

At length the prisoners were brought in, pushed through the throng that stood thick at the back, and hurried into the dock, which was like a long pew behind the circular seats of the advocates and directly in front of the bench.

There were seven of them, a sorry company, two women and five men, with nothing in common save the pallid, almost pasty complexions which had come of the dank air they had been living in.

There was another moment of silence. It was time for the Deemster to take the pleas, but again he did not speak immediately. He had the look of a man who was struggling against physical weakness. The blood rushed to his pale face and as quickly disappeared. "He's not fit for it to-day," people whispered.

But at the next moment, in a low voice, and with the appearance of one who was making an effort to command his strength, the Deemster was reading the indictments.

He took the prisoners in the order in which they stood before him, beginning with the one on the extreme left. He was a very young man, almost a boy, with a face that might have been that of his mother when she was a girl. His name was Quiggin; he had been a bank clerk and was charged with embezzlement. He pleaded Guilty and looked down as if he expected the earth to open under his feet.

The next was a gross, fat, middle-aged woman with red cheeks and many heavy gold rings on her stubby fingers. Her name was Kegeen, and she was charged with robbing drunken sailors in a house she had kept in an alley off the south quay. In a torrent of words she denied everything and accused the police of black-mailing her.

The last was Bessie Collister and the Deemster paused perceptibly when he came to her.

She had carried herself straight when she entered the Court and was now sitting with her head thrown back. But, seeing that of all the prisoners she was the one on whom the eyes of the spectators were fastened, she had reached up her hands to a veil which was wrapped about her fur hat and drawn it down over her face. Observing this at the last moment, and thinking it the cause of the Deemster's silence, the jailer said in an audible whisper,

"Put up your fall, Bessie."

She did so, disclosing her thin white face and large eyes. And then in a voice so low that it would have been scarcely audible but for the strained silence in the court-house, the Deemster said,

"Elizabeth Corteen, stand up."

Bessie rose without embarrassment and fixed her eyes on the Deemster. And then he charged her.

"It is charged against you that on or about the fifth day of April—in the parish of Ballaugh, in the Isle of Man, feloniously, wilfully and of your malice aforethought, you did kill and murder a certain male child, contrary to the form of the Statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his Crown and dignity. How say you, are you guilty or not guilty?"

Without hesitation or halting, looking straight into the eyes of the Judge and speaking in a voice so clear that it resounded through the silent Court-house, Bessie answered,

"Not Guilty."

Her tone and bearing had gone against her. "The huzzy!" whispered one of the female spectators. "She might have more shame for her position, anyway. And did you see the way the forward piece looked up at the Deemster?"

II

It was not until Stowell had stepped on to the bench that he had realized what he had done for himself.

When he had asked for the prisoners to be brought in, and Bessie had come at the end of the short line and taken her place in the dock with the constable behind her, he had been seized with a feeling of choking shame.

That woman, looking so much older, with pallid cheeks sucked in by suffering, could she be the same? All the barrage he had built up for the protection of his position as Judge seemed to have gone down at the first sight of the girl's face. What a scoundrel he had been!

From that moment a whirl of confused emotions had held possession of him. When the time came to charge the prisoner he had felt as if he were reading out his own indictment. And when she had looked up fearlessly into his face and pleaded Not Guilty it was the same as if she were accusing himself.

After that he had a sense of acting as a detached person. In a strange voice, which did not seem to be his own, he heard himself asking the Attorney-General which case he wished to take first. The Attorney answered, "The murder case," and after the Clerk of the Rolls had read out the names of the jurymen, and they had taken their places in the jury-box, he heard himself, in the same strange voice, swearing them on the holy evangelists to "a true verdict give, according to the evidence and the laws of this isle."

When he turned his eyes back, Bessie was alone in the dock, save for the woman warder (with blue lips and a look of suffering) who sat at the farther end of it. She was still looking fearlessly up at him, and in front of her sat two others whose eyes were also fixed on his face—Alick Gell and Fenella. At that sight a terrible feeling took hold of him—that these three were the real judges in this trial and he was the prisoner at the bar.

He did not recover from the shock of this feeling until the Attorney-General began on the prosecution.

The Attorney, usually so kindly, was bitterly severe. The time had gone by when it could be said with truth that crime was practically unknown in the Isle of Man. Here, as elsewhere, crimes of all kinds were only too common, and not least common was the crime of infanticide.

The present case was one of peculiar atrocity. The prisoner was a young woman who might be said, not uncharitably, to have inherited a lawless disposition. After a reckless girlhood she had disappeared from her home, for no apparent reason, rather less than a year ago and remained away (nobody knew where or in what company) until a few weeks ago. She had then been ill and was put to bed in a condition which gave only too much reason for the belief that she was about to become a mother. That was on the fifth of April and two days later the body of a new-born infant had been found in a remote place, wrapped up and hidden away.

It would be established by witnesses that the infant had been born alive, that it had died by suffocation, and that the prisoner (incredible as it might appear) had been seen to bury it.

"Such," said the Attorney-General, "are the facts of this most unhappy case, and though the prisoner pleads Not Guilty, the evidence which I shall now call will leave no doubt that the child was her child and that it died by her hands. Therefore I ask (as well for the sake of humanity as for the good name of this island) that the Jury shall give such a verdict against the prisoner as will act as a deterrent on the heartless women, unworthy of the name of mothers, who, to save themselves from the just consequences of their evil conduct, are taking the innocent lives which under God they gave."

There had been a tense atmosphere in the Court-house during the Attorney-General's speech, and when it was over there were half-suppressed murmurs, hostile to the prisoner.

Looking towards the dock Stowell saw that Bessie was quite unmoved, but that Fenella, in front of her, was flushed and hot, and Gell's lower lip was trembling. Stowell was conscious of a complicated struggle going on within him and then of a blind and headlong resolution. He was going to save that girl—he was going to save her at all costs!

The first witness was the constable, a middle-aged man with a sour expression. After he had been sworn by the Deemster, the Attorney-General examined him.

His name was Cain and he was constable for the parish in which the crime had been committed. On the morning of April the seventh he received an information from Old Will Skillicorne of Baldromma-beg that something had been seen under the Clagh-ny-Dooiney. He had gone there and found the body of a new-born child, and had taken it to Dr. Clucas, who had made an examination. Later the same day he had taken statements from Old Will and his wife, relating to the prisoner, and had sent them up to the Chief Constable of the island at Douglas. The Chief Constable had ordered him to make a house-to-house visitation through the parish to see if any other woman might have been the mother of the child. He had done so with the result that the prisoner was the only person who had come under suspicion. She was then ill in bed, but in due course he had arrested her, and charged her before the High Bailiff, who had committed her for trial at that court—sending her to the hospital in the meantime.

With obvious nervousness Gell rose to cross-examine the witness.

"How far is it from the prisoner's home to the Clagh-ny-Dooiney?"

"Half a mile, maybe."

"What kind of road would you call it?"

"Rough and thorny, most of it."

Gell sat with a look of satisfaction, and the Deemster leaned forward.

"Constable," he said, "when you made your house-to-house visitation did you go beyond the boundary of your parish?"

"No, your Honour."

"Where is the boundary?"

"The glen is the boundary—the western side of it, Sir."

"How near to the western boundary are the nearest houses in the next parish?"

"Four hundred yards, perhaps."

"How many of them are there?"

"Fifteen or twenty, your Honour."

"Yet, though you visited the prisoner's home, which was half-a-mile from the Clagh-ny-Dooiney, you did not visit—you were not told to visit—the fifteen or twenty houses which were only four hundred yards away?"

"They were not in my parish, your Honour."

There was audible drawing of breath in court. Fenella, who had been reaching forward, dropped back, and Gell's pale face was smiling.

The next to be called was Dr. Clucas. His hands were twitching and his rubicund face was moist with perspiration—he was obviously an unwilling witness.

Yes, when the constable brought the body of the child he made a post-mortem examination. Applying the usual medical tests he came to the conclusion that the child had been born alive and had died of suffocation. On the morning of the following day he had been called in to see the prisoner. She was suffering from extreme exhaustion—a condition not inconsistent with the idea of recent confinement.

Gell, gathering strength but still agitated, rose again.

"How long had the child lived?"

"An hour or two, probably."

"And how long had it been dead?"

"Twenty-four to thirty hours at the outside."

"Is it your experience that within twenty-four to thirty hours after confinement a woman can walk half-a-mile along a rough and thorny road and carry a burden?"

"It certainly is not, Sir."

Gell sat with a piteous smile of triumph on his pale face, and the Deemster leaned forward again.

"Doctor," he said, "you speak of applying the usual medical tests—are they entirely reliable?"

"They are not infallible, your Honour. They have been known to fail."

"Then this child may have breathed and yet not had a separate existence?"

"It may—it is just possible, Sir."

"And the unhappy mother, whoever she may be, though obviously guilty of concealing its birth, may not have been guilty of the much greater crime of killing it?"

"That's so .... she may not, your Honour."

There was a still more audible drawing of breath in court when the doctor stood down. Fenella's eyes were shining and Gell's were sparkling with excitement.

The next witness was Bridget Skillicorne. She wore a big poke bonnet and a Paisley shawl which smelt strongly of lavender. She was very voluble (provoking ripples of laughter by her broad Manx tongue) and the Attorney-General had more than he could do to restrain her.

Aw, 'deed yes, she remembered the night of the sixth-seventh April, for wasn't it the night she had a cow down with the gripes? Colic they were calling it, but wutching it was, and she believed in her heart she knew who had wutched the craythur. So she sent her ould man over to the Ballawhaine for a taste of something to take off the evil eye. And while she was sitting in the cowhouse itself, waiting for the man to come home (it was terr'ble slow the men were, both in their heads and their legs), she saw the light of a fire that had blown up on the mountains. "Will it reach the hay in my haggard?" she thought, and out she went to look. And, behold ye, what did she see but the glen as light as day and a woman on her knees putting something under the Clagh-ny-Dooiney. Who was she? The Collister girl of course. Sure? Sarten sure! And as soon as it was day she went down to the stone to see what the girl had left there. What was it? A baby—what else? Lying there in a scarf, poor bogh, like a little white mollag.

"What's mollag?" (Bridget's Manx had gone beyond the Attorney, but the jurymen were smiling.) "Ask them ones—they know."

Gell, with a newspaper-cutting in his hand, rose to cross-examine the old woman.

"You and your husband are sub-tenants of the prisoner's step-father, isn't that so?"

"Certainly we are—you ought to know that much yourself, Sir."

"I see you told the High Bailiff you were on bad terms with your landlord."

"Bad terms, is it? I wouldn't bemane myself with being on any terms at all with the like."

"He threatened to turn you out of your croft at Hollantide, didn't he?"

"He did, the dirt!"

"And you said you'd see him thrown out before you?"

"It's like I did, and it's like I will, too, for if your father, the Spaker...."

The Attorney-General rose in alarm. "Is it suggested by these questions that the witness has an animus against the prisoner's family and is conspiring to convict her?"

"That," said Gell, in a ringing voice, "is precisely what is suggested."

"What?" cried Bridget, bobbing her poke bonnet across at Gell. "Is it a liar you're making me out? Me, that has known you since you were a loblolly-boy in a jacket?"

The Deemster intervened to pacify the old woman, and then took her in hand himself.

"Bridget," he said, "how far is it from your house on the brews down to the Clagh-ny-Dooiney? Is it three or four hundred yards, think you?"

"Maybe it is. But it's yourself knows as well as I do, your Honour."

"Is your sight still so good that you can see a woman to know her at that distance?"

"Aw, well, not so bad anyway. And then wasn't it as bright as day, Sir?"

"Listen. This court-house is not more than fifteen yards across, and less than ten to any point from the box in which you stand. Do you think you could recognise anybody you know in this audience?"

"Anybody I know? Recognise? Why not, your Honour?"

"You know Cain the constable?"

"'Deed I do, and his mother before him. A dacent man enough, but stupid for all...."

"Well, he is one of the three constables who are now standing at this end of the jury-box—which of them is he?"

"Which? Do you say which, your Honour?" said Bridget, screwing up her wrinkled face. "Why, the off-one, surely."

There was a burst of irrepressible laughter in court—Bridget had chosen wrongly.

The next witness was old Will Skillicorne. He was wearing his chapel clothes, with black kid gloves, large and baggy, and was carrying a silk hat that was as straight and long and almost as brown as a length of stove-pipe. When called upon to swear he said he believed the old Book said "Swear not at all," and when asked what he was he answered that he believed he was "a man of God."

Aw, yes, he believed he remembered the night of the six-seventh of April, and he was returning home from an errand into Andreas when the prisoner passed him coming down the glen.

"At what time would that be?" asked Gell.

"Two or three in the morning, I belave."

"Then it would be still quite dark?"

"I was carrying my lantern, I belave."

"What was the prisoner doing when she passed you?"

"Covering her eyes with shame, I belave, as well she might be."

"Then you did not see her face?"

"I belave I did, though."

"Believe! Believe! Did you or did you not—yes or no?"

"I belave I did, Sir."

"Mr. Skillicorne," said the Deemster, "you attach importance to your belief, I see."

The old man drew himself up, and answered in his preaching tone,

"It's the rock of my salvation, Sir."

"Your wife told us that your errand into Andreas was to see the Ballawhaine about your sick cow. Is that the well-known witch-doctor?"

"I .... I .... I belave it is, Sir."

"And what did he give you?"

"A .... a wisp of straw and a few good words, Sir."

"Then you believe in that too—that a wisp of straw and a few good words...."

But the Deemster could not finish—a ripple of laughter that had been running through the Court having risen to a roar which he did not attempt to repress. "He has made up his mind about this case," said someone.

The Attorney-General, who was looking hot and embarrassed, called the last of his witnesses. This was the house-doctor at the hospital, the young man with the thin hair and pugnacious mouth.

Asked if he remembered the prisoner being brought into hospital he said "Perfectly." Had he formed any opinion of her condition? He had. What was it? That she had been confined less than five days before. What made him think so? First her unwillingness to be examined and then....

"She refused?"

"She did, your Honour, and threatened violence, but she became unconscious soon afterwards and then...."

"Stop!" said the Deemster, and looking down at the Attorney he asked if the High Bailiff, in committing the prisoner, had ordered that she should be examined.

The Attorney-General shook his head helplessly, whereupon the Deemster, with a severe face, turned back to the witness.

"You are a qualified medical practitioner?"

"I am," said the witness, straightening himself.

"Then of course you know that for a doctor to examine a woman against her will and without a magistrate's order is to commit an offence for which he may be severely punished?"

The pugnacious mouth opened like a dying oyster.

"Y-es, your Honour."

"Therefore you did not examine her?"

"N-o, your Honour."

"And you know nothing of her condition?"

"No——"

"Stand down, Sir."

There was a commotion in the court-house. The prisoner's face was still calm, but Fenella's was aglow and Gell's was ablaze.

"Mr. Attorney," said the Deemster quietly, "have you any further evidence?"

The Attorney, who had been whispering hotly to Hudgeon, said,

"No, there was a nurse who might have given conclusive evidence, but, thinking the doctor's would be sufficient, my colleague has allowed her to leave the island. No, that is my case, your Honour."

Stowell, secretly glad at the turn things had taken, was about to put an end to the trial, when Gell, intoxicated by his success, leapt up and said,

"I might ask the Court to dismiss this case immediately on the ground that there is nothing to put before the jury. But the wicked and cruel charge may follow the accused all her life, therefore I propose, with the Court's permission, to waive my right of reply and call such positive evidence of her innocence as will enable her to leave this court without a stain on her character."

"The fool!" thought Stowell. But just at that moment the clock of the Castle struck one, and the Governor said,

"The Court will adjourn for luncheon and resume at two."

As Stowell stepped off the bench his eye caught a glimpse of the inscription on a brass plate which had lately been affixed to the wall under his father's portrait—

"Justice is the most sacred thing on earth."

His head dropped; he felt like a traitor.

III

When the trial was resumed the Attorney-General had not returned to court, so Hudgeon represented the Crown. He was offensive from the first, but Gell, whose spirits had risen perceptibly, was not to be put out.

The witness he called first was Mrs. Collister. The old mother had to be helped into the witness-box. Her poor face was wet with recent tears, and in administering the oath Stowell hardly dared to look at her. Remembering the admissions she had made to him at Ballamoar he knew that she had come to give false evidence in her daughter's cause.

She made a timid, reluctant and sometimes inaudible witness. More than once Hudgeon complained that he could not hear, and Gell, with great tenderness, asked her to speak louder.

"Speak up, Mrs. Collister. There's nothing to fear. The Court will protect you," he said. But Stowell, who saw what was hidden behind the veil of the old woman's soul, knew it was another and higher audience she was afraid of.

With many pauses she repeated, in answer to Gell's questions, the story she had told before—that her daughter had returned home ill on the fifth of April, that she had put her to bed in the dairy-loft and that the girl had never left it until Cain the constable came to arrest her.

"You saw her day and night while she was at your house?"

"Aw, yes, Sir, last thing at night and first thing in the morning."

"And you know nothing that conflicts with what she says—that she never had a child and therefore could not have killed it?"

"'Deed no, Sir, nothing whatever."

She had answered in a tremulous voice which the Deemster found deeply affecting. Once or twice she had lifted her weak eyes to his with a pitiful look of supplication, and he had had to turn his own eyes away. "I should do it myself," he thought.

"And now, Mrs. Collister," said Gell, "if you were here this morning you heard what the Attorney-General said—that your daughter had been of a lawless disposition and had run away from home without apparent reason. Is there any truth in that?"

"Bessie was always a good girl, Sir. It was lies the gentleman was putting on her."

"Is the prisoner your husband's daughter?"

"No, Sir," the old woman faltered, "his step-daughter."

"Is it true that her step-father has always been hard on her?"

The old woman hesitated, then faltered again, "Middling hard anyway."

"Don't be afraid. Remember, your daughter's liberty, perhaps her life, are in peril. Tell the Jury what happened on the day she left home."

Then nervously, fearfully, looking round the Court-house as if in terror of being seen or heard, the old woman told the story of the first Saturday in August.

"So your husband deliberately shut the girl out of the house in the middle of the night, knowing well she had nowhere else to go to?"

"Yes, if you plaze, Sir."

"It's a lie—a scandalous lie!" cried somebody at the back of the court.

"Who's that?" asked the Governor, and he was told by the Inspector of Police (who was already laying hold of the interrupter) that it was the husband of the witness.

"A respectable man's character is being sworn away," cried Dan. "Put me in the box and I'll swear it's a lie."

In the tumult that followed the Deemster raised his hand.

"This Court has been fenced," he said severely, "and if anybody attempts to brawl here...."