"Is he not guilty?" the Deemster answered. "And is it not your duty and mine to punish the guilty?" But the Bishop went on impetuously, panting as he spoke, and in a faint, broken tone: "Then if you should be mistaken--if all this that you tell me should be a fatal coincidence that my son can not explain away? What if I took him and presented him, and sent him to the gallows, as you say, and some day, when all that is now dark became light, and the truth stood revealed, what if then I had to say to myself before God, 'I have taken the life of my son?' Brother, is your heart brazed out that you can think of it without pity?" The Bishop had dropped to his knees. "I see that you are a coward," said the Deemster, contemptuously. "And so this is what your religion comes to! I tell you that the eyes of the people of this island are on you. If you take the right course now their reverence is yours; if the wrong one, it will be the worst evil that has ever befallen you from your youth upward." The Bishop cried, "Mercy, mercy--for Christ's sake, mercy!" and he looked about the room with terrified eyes, as if he would fly from it if he could. But the Deemster's lash had one still heavier blow. "More, more," he said--"your Church is on its trial also, and if you fail of your duty now, the people will rise and sweep it away." Then a great spasm of strength came to the Bishop, and he rose to his feet. "Silence, sir!" he said, and the Deemster quailed visibly before the heat and flame of his voice and manner. But the spasm was gone in an instant, for his faith was dead as his soul was dead, and only the galvanic impulse of the outraged thing remained. And truly his faith had taken his manhood with it, for he sat down and sobbed. In a few moments more the Deemster left him without another word. Theirs had been a terrible interview, and its mark remained to the end like a brand of iron on the hearts of both the brothers. The night was dark but not cold, and the roads were soft and draggy. Over the long mile that divided Bishop's Court from Ballamona the old Deemster walked home with a mind more at ease than he had known for a score of years. "It was true enough, as he said, that I never loved Ewan," the Deemster thought. "But then whose was the fault but Ewan's own? At every step he was against me, and if he took the side of the Bishop and his waistrel son he did it to his own confusion. And he had his good parts, too. Patient and long-suffering like his mother, poor woman, dead and gone. A little like my old father also, the simple soul. With fire, too, and rather headstrong at times. I wonder how it all happened."