"Is the prisoner your husband's daughter?" "No, Sir," the old woman faltered, "his step-daughter." "Is it true that her step-father has always been hard on her?" The old woman hesitated, then faltered again, "Middling hard anyway." "Don't be afraid. Remember, your daughter's liberty, perhaps her life, are in peril. Tell the Jury what happened on the day she left home." Then nervously, fearfully, looking round the Court-house as if in terror of being seen or heard, the old woman told the story of the first Saturday in August. "So your husband deliberately shut the girl out of the house in the middle of the night, knowing well she had nowhere else to go to?" "Yes, if you plaze, Sir." "It's a lie--a scandalous lie!" cried somebody at the back of the court. "Who's that?" asked the Governor, and he was told by the Inspector of Police (who was already laying hold of the interrupter) that it was the husband of the witness. "A respectable man's character is being sworn away," cried Dan. "Put me in the box and I'll swear it's a lie." In the tumult that followed the Deemster raised his hand. "This Court has been fenced," he said severely, "and if anybody attempts to brawl here...." "Then let me be sworn. I'm only a plain Manxman, blood and bone, but I can tell the truth as well as some that make a bigger mouth." "Behave yourself!" "Give me a chance to save my character and fix the disgrace of these bad doings where it belongs." "I give you fair warning...." "Put the saddle on the right horse, Dempster. He's near enough to yourself, anyway." "Silence!" "Why doesn't he come out into the open, not hide behind the skirts of a girl with a by-child?" "Remove that man to the cells, and keep him there until the trial is over." "What?" cried Dan, in a loud voice. "Remove him!" cried the Deemster, in a voice still louder, and at the next moment, Dan, shaking his fist at the prisoner and cursing her, was hustled out of Court. When the tempestuous scene was over and silence had been restored, the witness was trembling and covering her face in her hands and Hudgeon was on his feet to cross-examine her. "I think your father was the late John Corteen, the Methodist?" "Yes, sir." "He was a good man, wasn't he?" "As good a man as ever walked the world, Sir." "He had a reputation for strict truthfulness--isn't that so?" "'Deed it is, Sir. The old Dempster would take his word without asking him to swear to it." "You were much attached to him, were you not?" The old woman wiped her eyes, which were wet but shining. "That's truth enough, Sir." "And now he's dead and I daresay you sometimes pray for the time when you'll see him again?" "Morning and night, every day of my life since I closed the man's dying eyes for him." The advocate turned his gleaming eyes to the Jury and the side of his powerful face to the witness. "You are a Methodist yourself, aren't you?" "Such as I am, Sir."