"He hadn't far to look, though. And if thou had nothing in thy pocket and not much on thy back thou had plenty in thy mouth to make up for it. Thou were not afraid of scandal! Thou didn't mind marrying a girl who had been talked of with another man!" "And I did, didn't I?" "Thou did, God forgive thee! But not till the man's trembling hand had reached up to the hole in the thatch over his bed for his stocking purse and counted the money out to thee. Three hundred good Manx pounds he had worked thirty years for and saved up for his daughter. And then thou swore on the Holy Book to be good to his girl and her baby, and the man's dying eyes on thee. And now--now thou talks of turning my girl out of the house--this house that would have been her house some day if thou had not come between us. But no! Thou shan't do that." "Shan't I?" "'Deed thou shan't! She may have done wrong, but if she has it's no more than her mother did before her, and if _I_ daren't turn her out for it thou shalt not." "We'll see, ma'am, we'll see," said Dan. He was buttoning up his waistcoat and putting on his coat. "It's no use talking to a woman. There's not much sense to be got out of the like anyway. But when a man marries, the property of the wife becomes the property of the husband--that's Dempster's law, isn't it? And standing up for your legal rights, and not being forced by your wife, or anybody else, to find maintenance for another man's offspring when it comes--that's Dempster's law too, I belave." "Yes," said the old woman, "and standing up for your own flesh and blood when she's sick and weak and the world is going cold on her and she has nowhere else to lay her head in her trouble--that's Mother's law, Dan Collister, and it's older than the Dempster's, I'm thinking." "Do as you plaze, ma'am," said Dan. "If you want more noising about the bad doings of your daughter it's all as one to me." He took his billycock hat down from the "lath" under the ceiling and continued, "I'll hear what the Speaker has to say about this, though. His wife wasn't for doing much for thee when the honour of this house was in question, but maybe she'll alter her tune now that it's the honour of her own." He drew his whip from its nail over the fireplace and stepped to the door. "And if this matter ends as I expect I'll be hearing what the Coorts have to say about it, too. Young Mr. Sto'll is to be made Dempster they're telling me. They're putting him in for it, anyway, and he is bosom friend to the Spaker's son. But friend or no friend," he said, with his hand on the hasp, and ready to go, "maybe his first job when he comes back to the island will be to send his Coroner to this house to turn the man's mistress and her by-child into the road." "Tell him to send her coffin at the same time, then," cried the old woman, almost screaming. "Mine too, Dan Collister. That's the only way he'll turn my daughter out of this house, I promise thee."