CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE VOICE OF THE SEA

"Forgive you? Never while that girl lies in prison as the consequence of your sin."

The words beat on Stowell's brain with the paralysing effect of a muffled drum. He was driving up the mountain road. Char-à-bancs, full of English visitors (who were laughing and singing in chorus), were coming down. The drivers shouted at him from time to time. This irritated him until he realised that his motor-car was oscillating from side to side of the road.

When he reached the top, where the road turns towards the glen, all the heart was gone out of him. The great scene no longer brought the old joyousness. With love lost and hope quenched the soul of the world was dead, and the heavens were dark above him.

At the bottom of the glen, where it dips into the Curragh, he came upon a group of bare-headed women, with their arms under their aprons, surrounding a little person with watery eyes, in a poke bonnet and a satin mantle. Mrs. Collister had returned from Castletown, and her neighbours were taking her home.

"Never mind, woman! It will be all set right at the judgment. And then the man will be found out and punished, too!"

At the corner of the cross roads Dan Baldromma threw himself in front of the car, to draw it up, and in his raucous voice he fell on Stowell with a torrent of abuse.

"You've been locking up a respectable man, Dempster, but you can't lock up his tongue, and the island is going to know what justice in the Isle of Man can be."

Stowell made no answer. Any poor creature could insult him now.

Janet was waiting for him at Ballamoar, with a fire in the library, and the tea-tray ready. But the sweet home atmosphere only made him think of the happiness that had been so nearly within his reach.

Seeing that something was amiss, Janet assumed her cheeriest tone, brought out two patterns of damask, laid them over chairs, and asked which Fenella would like best for her boudoir.

"I don't know. I can't say. But .... it doesn't matter now."

Janet gathered up her patterns and went out of the room without a word.

"Forgive you? Never while that girl lies in prison." The stinging words followed him to his bedroom. They broke up his sleep. They rang like the screech of an owl through the darkness of the night.

Next day, not trusting himself to drive his car, he returned to Castletown by train. There were only two first-class compartments and both were full. He was about to step into a third-class carriage when a voice cried,

"This way, Deemster. Always room enough for you."

There was to be a sitting of the Keys that day and the compartment was full of northside members. The talk was about yesterday's trial, and Stowell realised that his management of the case had created a favourable impression. Merciful to the prisoner? Yes, until her guilt was established, but then just, even at the expense of friendship.

This led to talk about Gell as the girl's fellow-sinner.

"Shocking! But it's not the first time he has been mixed up with a woman."

Stowell felt an intolerable shame at Gell's undeserved obloquy and his own unmerited glory, but he could say nothing.

"It will kill the old man," said one of the Keys. The train had drawn up at a side station and his voice was loud in the vacant air.

"Hush!"

The Speaker was in the next compartment.

When the train started again a little man with the face of a ferret began to make facetious references to "Fanny." Stowell's hands were itching to take the ribald creature by the throat and fling him out of the window, but something whispered, "Who are you to be the champion of virtue?"

At Court that day, and the day following, he found it hard to concentrate. At one moment an advocate said,

"Perhaps your Honour is not well this morning?"

"Oh no! I heard you. You were saying...."

The rapidity of his mind enabled him to make up for his lapses in attention, and when his time came to sum up he was always ready.

He was indulgent to the accused. All the other prisoners were acquitted—the fat woman for the reason that, bad as her character might be, the characters of her drunken sailors were yet worse (therefore no credit could be attached to their evidence), and the boy who had embezzled on the ground that his superiors at the bank had been guilty of almost criminal negligence, and the four months he had been in prison already were sufficient to satisfy the claims of justice.

The boy's mother, who was standing at the back, threw her arms about him and kissed him when he stepped out of the dock, and then, turning her streaming face up to the bench, she cried,

"God bless you, Deemster! May you live long and every day of your life be a happy one."

Back at home, Stowell plunged into the task of drawing up the report for the English authorities which was to accompany the recommendation to mercy. In two days (having his father's library to fall back upon) he knew more about the grounds upon which the prerogative of the Crown could properly be exercised than anybody in the island had ever before been required to learn, and when he had finished his task he had no misgivings.

Bessie's sentence would be commuted to imprisonment. And then (life for the poor soul being at an end in the Puritanical old island) he must find some secret means of sending her away.

"Never while that girl...." But wait! Only wait!

Being legislator as well as Judge, he attended the first meeting of Tynwald Court after his appointment. The Governor administered the oath to him in a private room, and then, taking his arm, led the way to the legislative chamber.

"Do you know it's six days since you were at Government House, my boy? What is Fenella to think of you?"

"Has she .... has she been asking for me, Sir?"

"Well, no, not to say asking, but still .... six days, you know."

Stowell sat on a raised daïs between the Attorney-General and Deemster Taubman, who was sufficiently recovered to hobble in on two sticks. The proceedings were of the kind that is usual in such assemblies, the Manx people being the children of their mothers, loving to talk much and about many things.

He found it difficult to fix his attention, and was watching for an opportunity to slip away, when the vain repetitions which are called debate suddenly ceased and the Governor called on an Inspector by Police to carry round a Bill which had to be signed by all.

In the interval of general conversation that followed, Deemster Taubman, a gruff and grizzly person, leaned back in his seat, put his thumbs in the armholes of his soiled white waistcoat and talked to Stowell.

"You did quite right in that case of the girl Collister, Sir. In fact you were only too indulgent. I have no pity for the huzzies who run away from the consequences of their misconduct. Murder is murder, and there is no proper punishment for it but death."

"But the Jury recommended the girl to mercy, and her sentence will be commuted," said Stowell.

"Eh? Eh? Then you haven't heard what has happened?"

"What?"

"The Governor has reported against the recommendation."

"Reported against it?"

"Certainly. And as the authorities in London are not likely to read the report and are sure to act on the Governor's advice, the girl will go to the gallows."

Stowell felt as if he had been struck over the eyes by an unseen hand. As soon as he had signed the Bill (in a trembling scrawl) he whispered to the Attorney-General that he was unwell and fled from the chamber.

"Humph!" said Taubman, looking after him. "That young man is going to break down, and no wonder. His appointment as Deemster was the maddest thing I ever knew."

II

"No, Mr. Stowell, no! You must stay in bed for the next two days at least. I must really insist this time. No work, no excitement, no heart-strain. Remember your father, and take my advice, Sir."

It was Doctor Clucas, who, sent for by Janet, had arrived at Ballamoar before Stowell got out of bed in the morning.

With closed eyes Stowell reviewed the situation. It was shocking, horrible, intolerable. Not for fifty years had a woman suffered the full penalty of such a crime. He must find some way to prevent it.

But after a while a terrible temptation came to him. "Why can't I leave things alone?" he asked himself.

He had done all he could be expected to do. If the Crown, acting on the advice of the Governor, refused to exercise its prerogative of mercy, what right had he to interfere?

It might be best for himself, too, that the law should take its course—best in the long run. If Bessie's sentence were commuted to imprisonment what assurance had he that on coming out of prison she would allow him to send her away from the island? On the contrary she might refuse to be banished, and if she found that the blame of her misfortune had fallen on Gell she might tell the truth to free him.

What then? He would be a dishonoured man. His position as a Judge would be imperilled; his marriage with Fenella would be impossible, and his whole life would crash down to a welter of disgrace and ruin. But if Bessie were gone there would be no further danger. And after all, it would not be he but the law that had taken her life.

"Then why can't I leave things alone?" he thought.

He decided to do so, but his decision brought him no comfort. Towards evening he got up and went out to walk in the farmyard. There he met Robbie Creer, who was just home from the mill with his head full of a pitiful story.

It was about Mrs. Collister. Since her daughter's trial the old woman had fallen into the habit of walking barefoot in the glen, chiefly at midnight, and generally in the neighbourhood of the Clagh-ny-Dooiney. At first she had seen a light. Then she had heard a pitiful cry. She was certain it was the cry of a child, a spirit-child, unbaptised and therefore unnamed, and for that reason doomed to wander the world, because unable to enter Paradise. At length she had taken heart of God and going out in her nightdress she had called through the darkness of the trees, "If thou art a boy I call thee John. If thou art a girl I call thee Joney." After that she had heard the cry no more, and now she knew it had been Bessie's child, and the bogh-millish was at rest.

This story of the old mother's developing insanity rested heavily on Stowell's heart and went far to shake his resolution.

After a day or two he began to find his own house and grounds haunted. He could not go into the library without the kind eyes in his mother's picture following him about the room with a pleading look. He could not sit in the dining-room after dinner without remembering his week-ends as a student-at-law, when his father and he would draw up at opposite cheeks of the hearth, and the great Deemster would talk of the great crimes, the great trials and the great Judges.

But his worst ordeal was with Janet. Not a word of explanation had passed between them, yet he was sure she knew everything. One evening, going into her sitting-room, he found her with her knitting on her lap, and a copy of the insular newspaper on the floor, looking out on the lawn with a far-off expression. That brought memories of another evening when he had told her that no girl on the island had ever fallen into trouble through him, or ever should do.

"Ah! Is that you, Victor?" she cried, recovering herself and making her needles click, but he had gone, and her voice followed him from the room.

Still wrestling with his temptation to stand aside and let the law take its course, Ballamoar became intolerable to him. On the lame excuse of his fortnightly court in the northside town he decided to go to Ramsey, and wrote to Mrs. Quayle to get his old rooms ready.

But going from Ballamoar to his chambers was like leaping out of the fire into the furnace. When he opened a disordered drawer up came the Castletown portrait of Bessie Collister like a ghost out of the gloom. When he went for a walk to tire himself for the night his steps involuntarily turned towards the pier where the lighthouse had been shattered by lightning. When he returned and was putting the key in the lock of his outer door he had the tingling sense of a woman's warm presence behind him. When he pulled down his bedroom blind the broken cord brought a stabbing memory. And when he awoke in the morning he felt that he had only to open his eyes to see a girl's raven black hair on the pillow beside him.

But Mrs. Quayle's presence was the keenest torment of all. The good old Methodist moved about him at breakfast without speaking, but one morning, fumbling with her bonnet strings before going, she said,

"Deemster, have you remembered this case of Bessie Collister in your prayers?"

He removed to Douglas—the Fort Anne Hotel, a breezy place, which sits on the ledge of the headland and just over the harbour. At first the babble and movement of the hotel distracted him, but after a day or two he was drawn back into the maelstrom of his own thoughts.

Having a private sitting-room he borrowed law books from the Law Library and sat far into the night to read them. He selected the treatises on Infanticide—those bitter records of the age-long strife between the laws of man and of God. Particularly he read the charges of the British Judges (Scottish too frequently), the bewigged ruffians who, in the abomination of their Puritanical tyranny, and the brutal lust of their judicial vengeance, had hounded poor women to the gallows in the very nakedness of shame.

"Damn them! Damn them!" he would cry, leaping up with a desire to trample on the dead Judges' graves. But then the same persistent voice within would say, "Wait awhile! Who are you to stand up for justice and mercy?"

Crushed and ashamed he would creep up to bed through the silent house, and thinking of the girl whose dark eyes had intoxicated him in the glen (the girl he had afterwards held in his arms) he would say,

"Is it possible that I can stand by and see her given over to the hangman?"

That terrified him. In the darkness he pictured to himself the scene of Bessie's death and burial, and thought of his after-life as a Judge, when he would have to go to Court to try other such cases—and Bessie lying out there in the prison-yard.

After Ballamoar, with its pastoral tranquillity, the twittering of birds and the sleepy singing of the streams, Fort Anne was sometimes a tempestuous place, with the wash of the waves in the harbour, the monotonous moan of the sea outside and the melancholy wail of the gulls. He thought he heard Bessie's cry in the voice of the sea—her piercing cry when she was being carried out of Court after he had sentenced her.

One night he thought Bessie was dead. He was dead too. They were standing side by side in an awful tribunal and she was accusing him before God.

"He let me die! He killed me! He is my assassin!"

The sound of his own voice awakened him. A dream! It was the grey of dawn; a storm had risen in the night; the white sea was rolling over the breakwater and the sea-fowl were screaming through the mist and roar.

No, by God! If it was a question of Bessie witnessing against him in this world or in the next, he had no longer any doubt which it should be. No more temptations! No more hypocrisy and self-doubt! No more wandering about like a lost soul!

He would go up to the Governor. He would call upon him to withdraw his objection to the Jury's recommendation. And if he refused .... he should see what he should see.

At eight o'clock in the morning he was walking down the quay in the calm sunshine, looking at the activities of the harbour, and nodding cheerfully to the fishermen as he passed. He was on his way to Government House, and his conscience, with which he had wrestled so long, was triumphant and erect.

Then came a shock.

He was crossing the stone bridge that leads up to the town when he saw the Governor's blue landau coming down in the direction of the railway station. It was open. Fenella was sitting in it.

Stowell was certain she saw him. But she only coloured up to the eyes and dropped her head. At the next instant her carriage had crossed in front of him and swept into the station-yard.

Something surged in his throat; something blinded his eyes. But after a moment he threw up his head and walked firmly forward.

"Wait! Only wait! We'll see!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE HEART OF A WOMAN

Meanwhile Fenella had been going through her own temptation. On the night after the trial, having bathed her swollen eyes, she went down to dinner. Her father looked searchingly at her for a moment, and, as soon as they were alone, he said,

"Was it Stowell I saw driving towards the mountain road as I came up?"

"Perhaps it was," said Fenella.

"Then why didn't he stay to dinner?"

"Because .... I told him to go."

"Why?"

Fenella gulped down the lump that was rising in her throat and said,

"I have been deceived in him. He is not the man I supposed him to be."

"Don't be a fool, my dear. I understand what you mean. It is his conduct as a man, not as a Judge you are thinking of. But if every woman in the world thought she had a right to make a scrutiny into her husband's life before she married him there would be a fine lot of marriages, wouldn't there?"

Crude and even coarse as Fenella thought her father's moral philosophy, she found her self-righteousness shaken by it. Perhaps she had been unfair to Stowell. But why didn't he come and plead his own cause? She couldn't talk to her father, but if Victor came and told his own story....

Victor did not come. For two days her pride fought with her love and she thought herself the unhappiest woman in the world. Then to escape from the pains of self-reproach she conceived the idea of a fierce revenge upon Stowell. She would devote herself to his victim! Yes, she would make it her duty to lighten the lot of the poor creature he had ruined and deserted.

After a struggle, and many shameful tears, she went back to Castle Rushen, little knowing what a scorching flame she was to pass through.

By this time Bessie was feeling no bitterness against Stowell. The jailer had told her that the Deemster could not have acted otherwise. The law compelled him to condemn her. But he had told the Jury to recommend her to mercy, and now he would be writing to the King to ask him to let her off.

"Aw, he's good, miss—he's real good for all."

"Do you say that, Bessie? After he has betrayed you?" said Fenella,

"Betrayed? I wouldn't say that, miss."

"But he .... he took you to his rooms?"

"What else could he do, miss? All the inns were shut and it was raining, and I had nothing in my pocket."

"But .... having taken advantage of your homelessness and poverty, he afterwards cast you off?"

A mysterious wave of injured vanity struggled with Bessie's shame and she said,

"'Deed he didn't, then. He wanted to marry me."

"Marry you .... did you say marry...."

"Yes, he did, and that was why he sent me to school."

"But afterwards .... afterwards he changed his mind and turned you off .... I mean turned you over to somebody else?"

"'Deed no," said Bessie, with her chin raised. "It was me that gave him up after I found I was fonder of Alick."

Breathing hard, scarcely able to speak, with the hot blood rushing to her cheeks, Fenella compelled herself to go on.

"Did he know then that you...."

"No, miss, and neither did I, nor Alick, nor anybody."

"And when .... when was it that you went...."

"To his rooms in Ramsey? The first Saturday in August, miss."

Fenella went home, happy, miserable, tingling with shame and yet thrilling with love also. Stowell's victim had brought her heart back to him.

It was just because he had loved her more than he had loved that girl in prison that the worst had happened. It was just because she herself had persuaded, constrained and almost compelled him that he had sat on the case, not fully knowing what was to be revealed by it.

This lasted her half-way home in the train, and then her wounded pride rose again. After all Victor had been faithless to the love with which she had inspired him. If a man loved a woman it was his duty to keep himself pure for her. Victor had not done so, therefore she would never forgive him—never!

The Governor's carriage met her at the Douglas station, and when (wiping the scorching tears from her eyes) she reached Government House, she found another carriage standing by the porch.

"Miss Janet Curphey is here to see you, miss," said the maid.

II

From the day of the trial, when Victor had returned home with a white face and said, "It doesn't matter now," Janet had known what had occurred.

That Collister girl had corrupted Victor. She had always feared it would be so since "Auntie Kitty" had whispered over her counter that that "forward thing" of Liza Corteen's was boasting that Mr. Stowell had been "sooreying" with her in the glen. And now she had brought him under the very shadow of shame itself, just when life looked so bright and joyful.

Then came the insular newspaper with an account of Fenella's outburst at the trial. That was the cruellest blow of all. She had loved Fenella, and had always thought there would be nothing so sweet as to spread her wedding-bed for her, but now that she had taken sides against Victor and publicly denounced him, Janet's blood boiled. She would go up to Government House and give Fenella a piece of her mind. Why shouldn't she?

It was a dull afternoon when she set off for Douglas, and as she drove along the coast road she rehearsed to herself the sharp things she was going to say.

But when Fenella came into the drawing-room, looking so pale as to be scarcely recognisable as the radiant girl she used to be, and kissed her and sat by her side, Janet could scarcely say anything.

At length (Miss Green, who had been sitting at tea with her, having gone) Janet braced herself, and said, not without a tremor,

"I've come about Victor."

"Then he has told you?" said Fenella.

"'Deed he hasn't, and you needn't either, because I know."

Fenella drew her hand away and dropped her head.

"I don't say he hasn't done wrong," said Janet, "but you seem to think he's the only one who is to blame."

"Oh no! I see now that the girl in Castle Rushen...."

"The girl? I'm not thinking about the girl. Of course she is to blame. But is there nobody else to blame also?"

"Who else?"

"Yourself."

"Janet!"

"Oh, I'm telling you the truth, dear. That's what I've come for."

"But it all happened before I returned to the Island."

"That's why. If you hadn't stayed away so long it wouldn't have happened at all."

Then up from the sweet and sorrowful places of Janet's memory came the story of Stowell's love for Fenella—how he had worked for her and waited for her through all his long years as a student-at-law.

"It's me to know, my dear. He used to come home every week-end, and his poor father thought it was to see him, but I knew better. 'Any fresh news?' he would say, and I knew what news he wanted. When your photo came he held it under the lamp and said, 'Don't you think she's like my mother, Janet—just a little like?' And I told him yes, and that was to say you were like the loveliest woman that ever walked the world—in this island anyway."

Fenella was struggling to control herself.

"Poor boy, how he worked and worked for you! Jacob never worked harder or waited longer for Rachel. And what was his reward? You signed on at your ridiculous Settlement for seven years and sent word you would never marry. I had it from Catharine Green and it was a sorrowful woman I was to break the news to him. He looked at me with his mother's eyes, and it was fit enough to break my heart to see how he cried with his face on the pillow. But it was with his father's eyes he rose and said, 'It shall never happen again, mother.' He called me mother too, God bless him!"

Fenella was smothering her mouth in her handkerchief.

"If he went wrong after that, was it any wonder? Young men are young men, and the Lord won't be too hard on them for being what He has made them. Some people seem to think when trouble comes between a young man and a young woman that the young woman is the only one to be pitied. Well, I'm a woman and I don't. And when a young man has been cut off from the love that would have kept him right and the heavens have gone dark on him...."

"But I loved him all the time, Janet."

"Then why didn't you come back, instead of leaving him to the mercy of these good-looking young vixens who will run any risks with a young man if they can only get him to marry them?"

Fenella's eyes were down again.

"But that's not all. Not content with deserting him for so many years, you must try to disgrace him also."

"Janet!"

"Oh, I saw what you said at the trial."

"But nobody knows whom I...."

"Don't they indeed! The men may not—most of them are so stupid. They may even think you meant somebody else. But you can't deceive the women like that. And then he knew that you intended it for him. Just when you were about to become his wife, too, and you were the only woman in the world to him!"

"I was so shocked. I thought he wasn't the man I had taken him for."

"Perhaps he wasn't, perhaps he was, but thousands of women have lost faith in their men and clung to them for all that, and they're the salt of the earth, I say. I'm only an old maid myself, but to stand up for your husband, right or wrong, that's what I call being a wife, if you ask me."

Fenella could bear up no longer. She flung her arms about Janet's neck and buried her face in her breast.

The darkness was gathering before they broke from their embrace and then it was time for Janet to smooth out her silvery hair and go. Fenella saw her to the carriage and whispered as she kissed her,

"Tell him to come back to me."

And then Janet went home with shining eyes.

III

Day after day Fenella waited at home for Victor, denying herself to everybody else. Every afternoon she dressed herself in some gown he had said he liked her in. She dressed her hair, too, in the way he liked best. But still he did not come.

At length she determined to write to him. Writing was a terrible ordeal. Her pride fought with her love and she could never satisfy herself with her letters. First it was—

"DEAR VICTOR,—Don't you really think you've stayed away long enough? Remember your 'Manx ones'—especially your lovely and beloved Manx women—won't they be talking?"

But no, that was too much like threatening him, so she began again—

"DARLING,—Did you really think I meant all I said that day? Don't you know a woman better than that? I suppose you think I am very hard-hearted and can never forgive, but...."

No, that was wrong, too.

"VICTOR,—Don't you think I have been punished enough? It has been very hard for me, yet I love you still...."

But the trembling of her handwriting betrayed the emotion she wished to conceal. At last, after a long day of solitude and abandonment, two little lines—

"Vic,—I am so lonely. Come to me. Your broken-hearted—FENELLA."

But all her letters, with their cries and supplications, were torn up and thrown into the fire.

Why did he stay away? Did he expect her to bridge all the gulf between them? At length she thought he must be ill. The idea that he could be suffering (for her sake perhaps) swept down all her pride, and she determined to go to him.

But just as she was setting out for Ballamoar somebody brought word that Stowell was staying at Fort Anne. That quenched her humility. So near, yet never coming to see her! Oh, very well! Very well!

For two days she felt crushed and abased. Then she heard that Stowell was constantly to be seen at the Law Library, and that brought a memory and an explanation. She remembered that she had said (in that wild moment when she didn't know what she was saying) that she would never forgive him while the girl Bessie lay in prison.

That was it! He was finding a solid legal ground on which the prisoner could be liberated, and when he had convinced the law officers of the Crown that this was a proper case for the exercise of mercy, he would come up to her and say, "Bessie Collister is free!—the barrier between us is broken down."

For a full day after that her heart was at ease. Nay more, she was almost happy, for hidden away in some secret place of semi-consciousness was the thought that the measure of Stowell's efforts for Bessie Collister was the meter of his love for herself.

At length her impatience got the better of her tranquillity and she became eager to know what was going on. There was only one person who could tell her that—her father.

Coming down to breakfast on the sunny morning after the storm, she saw, among the letters by the Governor's plate, a large envelope superscribed, "HOME SECRETARY." When her father had opened it she said, as if casually,

"Any news yet about that poor thing in Castle Rushen?"

"Yes, there's something here."

"Of course she's pardoned?"

"On the contrary, her death-sentence has been confirmed."

"Confirmed?"

"Yes, she's to die, and it only remains for me to fix the date of the execution."

The sun went out as before a thunderstorm, and, rising from her unfinished breakfast, Fenella fled from the room. A great wave of pity seemed to sweep down every other feeling. She determined to go to Castle Rushen again and break the news tenderly to the unhappy woman.

On her way to the railway station her mind swung back to Stowell. After all he could have done nothing to save the girl's life. It was inconceivable that the authorities in London could have been indifferent to the opinion of the Judge who had tried the case.

"No, he can have done nothing—nothing whatever."

Then came a shock to her also.

As her carriage dipped into the hill going down to the station she saw Stowell coming up from the bridge with rapid strides. Something told her that, having heard the news, he was going to Government House to protest. But what was the good of going now? Useless! Worse than useless!

One glance she got of his face before she dropped her own. It was whiter and thinner than before, as if from sleepless nights and suffering. She wanted to stop; she wanted to go on; she did not know what she wanted.

At the next moment her coachman, who had seen nothing of Stowell, being occupied with the difficulties of the hill, had swept into the station-yard.

When she got out of the carriage her heart was burning with the pangs of mingled love and rage.

"If that girl dies in prison there shall never be anything between us—never," she thought.

But deep in her heart, almost unknown to herself, there was a still more poignant cry,

"He does not care for me—he cannot."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THE MAN AND THE LAW

When Stowell reached Government House he found the Governor in the garden, bareheaded and smoking a cigar of which he was obviously trying to preserve the ash, while he watched his gardener at his work of repairing the ravages of last night's storm among the flower-beds.

"Ah, you've come at last! But you have just missed Fenella. She has gone to Castletown—that girl again, I suppose."

"I know. I saw her. That's the matter I've come to speak about."

"So? Oblige me then by walking here so that I may keep an eye on the gardener."

Stowell winced, but stepped to and fro on the path by the Governor's side while in a low tone he broached his business.

"Deemster Taubman told me at Tynwald that you had reported against the Jury's recommendation."

"Well?"

"I thought perhaps you would permit me to explain the exact legal position."

"Yes?"

"It is fifty years at least since the prisoner has been executed on this island for that crime."

"Fifty, is it?"

The Governor blew his light blue smoke into the lighter blue air and watched it rising.

"Deemster Taubman seems to think that a prisoner who has wilfully taken life is necessarily a murderer. That is wrong, Sir."

"Wrong?"

"Quite wrong. It is established by the laws of this and every civilised country that it is the reason of man which makes him accountable for his action and the absence of reason acquits him of the crime."

"And is there any ground for thinking that this girl was not responsible?" said the Governor.

"Every ground, Sir. No woman in her position ever was or can be responsible."

"No? .... Gardener, don't you think those tulips...."

"That's why the law of England," continued Stowell, "has ceased to look upon infanticide as a crime punishable by death. In some foreign countries it is not looked upon as a crime at all. The woman who kills her child within five days after its birth is thought to be suffering from temporary mania and therefore not guilty of murder. Besides...."

"Besides—what?"

Stowell breathed heavily and then said,

"There are exceptional circumstances in this case which call for merciful treatment."

"You mean...."

"I mean," said Stowell, speaking rapidly and in a vibrating voice, "that the girl had no bad motives such as usually inspire murder—no greed, no lust, no desire for revenge. In fact, she meant no harm to anybody. On the contrary it is conceivable that she meant good—good even to her child—to save it from a life of suffering in a world in which it would have no father, no family, and nobody to care for it but its shamed and outcast mother."

The Governor looked at Stowell for a moment and thought.

"He's ill, and he's trying to unload his conscience."

Then he said aloud,

"So you've come to ask me to...."

"I've come to ask you, Sir, to withdraw your objection to the recommendation to mercy, so that the death sentence may be commuted to imprisonment."

Again the Governor looked at Stowell's heated face and thought, "Yes, he'll ill, and doesn't see that I am fighting his own battle.

"Do it, Sir," said Stowell. "Do it, for God's sake, before it is too late, and there is such an outcry throughout the kingdom as will shake the very foundations of justice in the island."

The Governor was still smoking leisurely and keeping his eye on his flower-beds.

"Gardener, don't you think that bed of geraniums...." he began, but Stowell could bear no more.

"Good God, Sir, isn't this matter of sufficient importance to merit your attention?"

The Governor turned sharply upon him, threw away his half-smoked cigar and said,

"Come this way."

Not another word was spoken until, returning to the house with a certain pomp of stride, with Stowell behind him, the Governor reached his room and closed the door behind him. Then, unlocking his desk, he took out a large envelope (the same that Fenella had seen at breakfast) and handed the contents of it to Stowell, saying,

"Look at that."

Stowell saw at a glance what it was and uttered a cry of astonishment.

"Then it's done."

"Yes, it's done. And now sit down and listen to me."

But Stowell continued to stand with the paper crinkling in his trembling fingers.

"You say Taubman told you I reported against the Jury's recommendation. Quite true! As President of the Court and head of the Manx judiciary, I told the Home Secretary I saw no justification for it—no justification whatever."

Stowell was silent.

"You say it is fifty years since such a crime has been punished by death. Perhaps it is, but the fact that the Statute remains is proof enough that the law contemplates cases in which it may properly be exercised. This in my view was such a case and I had every right to say so."

Still Stowell remained silent.

"You say the prisoner may have acted from a good motive. I see no good motive in a mother who takes the life of her child. You speak of her shame, but shame is no excuse for crime. Why shouldn't such women suffer shame? Shame is the just consequence of their evil conduct, and to try to escape from it by making away with their misbegotten children is crime."

Stowell was trembling but still silent.

"Pity for women of that sort is sentimental weakness. Worse, it is a danger to public safety. The sooner such people are put out of the world the better for the public good."

There was a palpable silence on both sides for some moments. The Governor glanced at Stowell's twitching face and began to be sorry for him. "Good Lord!" he thought, "why can't the man see that it's best for himself that the girl should die? As long as she lives the wretched scandal may break out again and his own share in it may come to light. And then Fenella! How could I allow her to marry him with that danger hanging over his head?"

Stowell's fingers were contracting over the paper that crinkled in his hand. At length he threw it on the desk and said,

"Your Excellency, if you carry out that sentence you will be committing a crime—a monstrous judicial crime."

The Governor returned the paper to his desk, and then rose and said, with a ring of sarcasm in his voice,

"So I am the criminal, am I? Well, I am responsible for public security in this island, and as long as I am here I am going to see that it is preserved. Offences of this kind have been too frequent of late and they can only be put down by law. The prisoner in the present case has been justly tried and rightly condemned, and it shall be my business to see that she pays the penalty of her crime."

Stowell's pale face had become scarlet, his lower lip was trembling. Outside the sea was sparkling in the sunlight; a band was playing far off on the promenade.

"Your Excellency," said Stowell, quivering all over, "it will be a life-long grief to me to resist your authority, but I must tell you at once that if you order that girl's execution it shall never be carried out."

"What do you say?"

"I say it shall never be carried out."

"Why not?"

"Because I shall prevent it."

The Governor rose. His face was red, his throat had swelled; his lips were compressed.

"Do you mean that you will go over my head...."

"I do...."

The Governor brushed Stowell aside in making for the bell.

"There's no heed for that. I'm going, Sir," said Stowell, and at the next moment the Governor was alone in his room, speechless with astonishment and wrath.

Going down the corridor Stowell passed the open door of the library—the room in which he had parted from Fenella. In quarrelling with her father had he burnt the last bridge by which Fenella and he could come together?

"But, God forgive me, I could do nothing else—nothing whatever."

II

Fenella found that the tragic news had reached Castle Rushen before her.

Bessie had received it at first with incredulity. Her expectation of pardon had reached the point of conviction, and every morning as she rose from her plank bed, she had said to herself, "It will came to-day."

When Tommy Vondy went into the condemned cell, blowing his nose repeatedly and talking about death, how it came to everybody sooner or later, Bessie looked at him with terror and screamed, "Oh, God help me! God help me!"

For a while she raved like a madwoman. Everybody had lied to her and deceived her, and the Deemster had done nothing to save her, because he wanted her out of the way.

But after a while an idea occurred to her and she became calm. Alick Gell! If Alick would go up to London and see the King and tell him that she had never intended to kill her baby he would forgive her. And then Alick would come galloping back, at the last moment perhaps, waving a paper over his head and crying, "Stop!"

She had seen such things in her illustrated Weekly Budget—the story paper she used to read on Sunday mornings at home, while the dinner was cooking in the oven-pot and her mother was singing hymns in the Primitive chapel and her father was poring over the "Mistakes of Moses."

But would he do it? She had deceived him twice. And then his sisters had always been trying to drag him away from her.

All at once, like the echo of a bell through a thick mist over the sea, came the memory of his cry as she was being carried out of Court: "Never mind, Bessie, I would rather be you than your Judge!"

Yes, he loved her still, and (out of the cunning which the air of a prison breeds) a scheme flashed upon her. She would write a letter to Alick Gell, not telling him what she wanted him to do, but plainly pointing to it.

Fenella was amazed to find Bessie apparently reconciled to her end. She had expected torrents of tears and even the coarse language of the farmyard.

"The suspense was the worst. I shall be glad when it's all over," said Bessie.

The only thing that troubled her was to die while Alick was thinking so hard of her, and if her hand did not shake so much she would write to ask for his forgiveness.

"I'll write for you," said Fenella.

"And will you give the letter into his own hands, miss, so that his sisters may not see it?"

"I'll try, dear."

Sitting by the door of the cell, under the light from the grill, Fenella wrote with the prison paper on her lap, while Bessie, without a vestige of colour in her forlorn face, dictated from the bed:

"DEAR ALICK,—You will have heard what they are going to do to me. It is dreadful, isn't it? I thought perhaps you would have written me a few lines, though I know it is too much to expect after all the sorrow and shame I have brought on you.

"Oh, if I could only have lived to make it up to you! We could have gone away, as you always said, to America or somewhere. I should have been so good, and we should have been so happy and nobody to cast all this up to us.

"What I did was very wrong, but I don't see what good it will do to the King to take my life, and me a poor girl he never saw in the world. I still think if there were anybody to speak for me he would forgive me even yet and everything would be all right. But that's more than anybody would do for me now, I suppose—even you, though I have always loved you so dear."

Bessie paused.

"Is that all?" asked Fenella, in a husky whisper.

"Not quite," said Bessie, and she began again.

"Mother was here last week and brought me your photo. It got wet in my bag on the way from Derby Haven, and it is cracked and smudged. But I kiss it constant and it is such company.

"Good-bye, Alick! My last thoughts will be of you and my last prayer that God will bless you. If I could only see you for a minute I think I should be satisfied. But if you can't come, write and say you forgive me. It has been all through my love for you that I am here, so think the best of me."

Bessie signed the letter, filling up the remaining space with crosses, and then wrote with her own hand—

"P.S.—It's a weak to-day, so if anything is to be done there's no time to lose."

Fenella saw through the girl's pitiful subterfuge, but knew well that Gell could do nothing. There was only one man in the island who could have saved Bessie, and that was the Judge who had tried her.

Why hadn't he?

All the way home in the train Fenella asked herself this question. The only answer she could find was that Stowell was afraid of offending the Governor, owing so much to him. But oh, if he had only resisted her father in this case—standing up against him and fearing no one—how she would have loved him!

She found Government House shuddering with awe, as if a tornado had swept through it and gone. At length Miss Green explained what had happened. Mr. Stowell had called to see the Governor and been turned out of the house!

Hardly had she reached her room when her father followed her into it.

"I suppose you know that Stowell has been here?" he said.

"Yes. What did he come for?"

"To threaten me—that's what he came for. To threaten me that if I attempted to carry out the sentence of the law on that girl in Castle Rushen he would prevent it."

Fenella tried to conceal the joy that was rising within her.

"What do you think he intends to do?" she asked.

"Appeal to the Home Secretary against me, I suppose. I shouldn't wonder if he leaves the island in the morning. And if he does, and brings back a pardon, it will be a vote of censure upon me—nothing short of it."

The Governor strode across the room in his wrath, and then suddenly drew up on seeing that Fenella was smiling.

"But I see who is the cause of the man's insane conduct," he said.

"Who?"

"You! You've broken with him, haven't you? Because he had the misfortune to encounter that woman long ago you hold him responsible for everything she has done since. So to satisfy your ridiculous qualms he falls back upon me. The fool! The damned fool! And you are no better! I don't know what's taking possession of women in these days. I'm sick to death of their feminist imbecilities and the braying of their male asses!"

"But father...."

"Don't talk to me," said the Governor, and with blazing eyes he swept out of the room.

Then Victor had done something! He did care for her! And now he was going to take some great risk to save the life of the girl in prison.

A momentary qualm about her duty to her father was swept down by the tide of her love for Stowell. After all, he was the man she had thought him to be! God bless and speed him!