Yes, when the constable brought the body of the child he made a post-mortem examination. Applying the usual medical tests he came to the conclusion that the child had been born alive and had died of suffocation. On the morning of the following day he had been called in to see the prisoner. She was suffering from extreme exhaustion--a condition not inconsistent with the idea of recent confinement. Gell, gathering strength but still agitated, rose again. "How long had the child lived?" "An hour or two, probably." "And how long had it been dead?" "Twenty-four to thirty hours at the outside." "Is it your experience that within twenty-four to thirty hours after confinement a woman can walk half-a-mile along a rough and thorny road and carry a burden?" "It certainly is not, Sir." Gell sat with a piteous smile of triumph on his pale face, and the Deemster leaned forward again. "Doctor," he said, "you speak of applying the usual medical tests--are they entirely reliable?" "They are not infallible, your Honour. They have been known to fail." "Then this child may have breathed and yet not had a separate existence?" "It may--it is just possible, Sir." "And the unhappy mother, whoever she may be, though obviously guilty of concealing its birth, may not have been guilty of the much greater crime of killing it?" "That's so .... she may not, your Honour." There was a still more audible drawing of breath in court when the doctor stood down. Fenella's eyes were shining and Gell's were sparkling with excitement. The next witness was Bridget Skillicorne. She wore a big poke bonnet and a Paisley shawl which smelt strongly of lavender. She was very voluble (provoking ripples of laughter by her broad Manx tongue) and the Attorney-General had more than he could do to restrain her. Aw, 'deed yes, she remembered the night of the sixth-seventh April, for wasn't it the night she had a cow down with the gripes? Colic they were calling it, but wutching it was, and she believed in her heart she knew who had wutched the craythur. So she sent her ould man over to the Ballawhaine for a taste of something to take off the evil eye. And while she was sitting in the cowhouse itself, waiting for the man to come home (it was terr'ble slow the men were, both in their heads and their legs), she saw the light of a fire that had blown up on the mountains. "Will it reach the hay in my haggard?" she thought, and out she went to look. And, behold ye, what did she see but the glen as light as day and a woman on her knees putting something under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_. Who was she? The Collister girl of course. Sure? Sarten sure! And as soon as it was day she went down to the stone to see what the girl had left there. What was it? A baby--what else? Lying there in a scarf, poor bogh, like a little white mollag. "What's mollag?" (Bridget's Manx had gone beyond the Attorney, but the jurymen were smiling.) "Ask them ones--_they_ know."