Dan, with his short, gross figure, was standing astride on the hearthrug, and without so much as a bow he plunged into his business. A respectable man's house was in disgrace. His step-daughter had run away. Been carried off by a scoundrel--there couldn't be a doubt of it. A month gone and not the whisper of a word from her. The mother was broken-hearted, so he had been traipsing the island over to find the girl. "I belave I'm on the track of her at last though. She's down Castletown way, and the man that's been the cause of her trouble isn't far off, I'm thinking." "And whom do you say it is, Mr. Collister?" "Somebody that's middling close to yourself, sir--Mr. Alick Gell, the son of the Spaker." "No, no, no!" "Who else then?" Stowell tried to speak but could not. "Wasn't he the cause of her disgrace at the High Bailiff's? And hasn't he been keeping up his bad character ever since--standing by the side of disorderly walkers in the Douglas Coorts, they're saying?" He must have promised to marry the girl. But he hadn't. He (Dan) had been to the Registrar's at Douglas and found that out. "The toot! The boght! The booby! I was warning her enough. The man that takes advantage of a dacent girl isn't much for marrying her afterwards." Remembering Dan's share in the catastrophe, Stowell was feeling the vertigo of a temptation to take the gross creature by the neck and fling him through the window. "Why do you come to me?" he asked. "To ask you to tell your friend that he's got to make an honest woman of the girl." "Is that all you are thinking about?" Dan drew a quick breath, then dug both hands into the upright pockets of his trousers, thrust forward his thick neck, with a gesture peculiar to the bull, and answered: "No, I'm thinking of myself as well, and what for shouldn't I? I'm going to stand up for my own rights, too. The man that treats my girl like that has got to marry her, and I'm not going to be satisfied with nothing less." Then picking up his billycock hat and making for the door he said: "I lave it with you, Mr. Stowell, Sir. If the Dempster was the grand gentleman people are saying, his son will be seeing justice done to me and mine. If not, the island will be too hot for the guilty man, I'm thinking." When Dan had gone Stowell felt sick and dizzy, and as if he were drawing back from the edge of a precipice. His heroic act of self-sacrifice had dwindled to a ridiculous weakness. This man, with his blatant vulgarity of mind and soul, at Ballamoar! His father-in-law! A member of his family! Riding over him with a degrading tyranny! In the dining-room, with his broad buttocks to the fire--never, never, never! Hardly had Dan's footsteps ceased on the stair when the young clerk came from the outer office in great excitement. "His Excellency is here. He's coming upstairs, Sir." II "Helloa, I've found you." The Governor was in yachting costume.