"Chut! Who's to know that if the Coorts acquit her? They are wayses and wayses. Lawyers are mortal clever at twisting the law when they're wanting to. You're Dempster now; and the bosom friend of the man that got my girl into this trouble has got to get her out of it." "So," said Stowell, breathing hard, "you have come to ask me to degrade Justice" (Dan made a grunt of contempt), "not to save the girl but to protect you--you and your rag of a character?" Dan drew himself up with a short laugh, half bitter and half triumphant. "Rag, is it? Take care what you're saying, Mr. Sto'll, Sir. You may be a big man in the island now, but there's them that's bigger and that's the people." Stowell pointed with a quivering hand to the clock on the landing, and said, "Look at that clock. If you're not out of this house in one minute...." Dan's laugh rose to a cry of derision. "So that's it, is it? That's what the first Justice of the Peace in the Isle of Man is, eh? Son of the ould Dempster too! The grand ould holy saint as they're...." But before he could finish, Stowell, with a shout that drowned Dan's laugh as if it had been the whimper of a baby girl, laid hold of the man by the collar of his coat and the slack of his trousers and flung him out of the open door and clashed it after him. Dan, who had rolled and tossed and bumped on the path like a fat hogshead kecked from the tail of a cart, picked himself up and went staggering down the drive, shaking his fist at the house and pouring his maledictions upon it in a voice that was like the broken howl of a limping dog. Janet came running from her room, and seeing Stowell with his eyes aflame and panting for breath, said, "Oh dear! Oh dear! Now you'll be worse." "On the contrary, I'll be better--better in every way," he said. His resolution was taken. Never would he sit on Bessie's case. Nothing should tempt him to do so. But Fate had not yet done with him. V On the afternoon of the following day Stowell walked for a long hour on the shore, trying to deaden the tumult in his brain in the loud surge of the sea. Returning to Ballamoar he found the Governor's carriage outside the house. Had the Governor come to see him? It was Fenella. She was at tea with Janet in the library. Although she rose to greet him with all the sunshine of her smile he could see that her face was feverish. "I've come to the north on three errands," she said. "So?" "First to see yourself, of course, and I find that, in spite of doctor's orders, you have already resumed your gypsy habits." "He _would_ go out, dear," said Janet. "Next, to deliver a message from the Governor." "Yes?" "He has postponed the Court for three days in the hope that you may be able to sit then." "Ah!" "My last errand was to see the mother of that poor girl who is to be charged with the murder of her child." "The mother?"