There was to be a sitting of the Keys that day and the compartment was full of northside members. The talk was about yesterday's trial, and Stowell realised that his management of the case had created a favourable impression. Merciful to the prisoner? Yes, until her guilt was established, but then just, even at the expense of friendship. This led to talk about Gell as the girl's fellow-sinner. "Shocking! But it's not the first time he has been mixed up with a woman." Stowell felt an intolerable shame at Gell's undeserved obloquy and his own unmerited glory, but he could say nothing. "It will kill the old man," said one of the Keys. The train had drawn up at a side station and his voice was loud in the vacant air. "Hush!" The Speaker was in the next compartment. When the train started again a little man with the face of a ferret began to make facetious references to "Fanny." Stowell's hands were itching to take the ribald creature by the throat and fling him out of the window, but something whispered, "Who are you to be the champion of virtue?" At Court that day, and the day following, he found it hard to concentrate. At one moment an advocate said, "Perhaps your Honour is not well this morning?" "Oh no! I heard you. You were saying...." The rapidity of his mind enabled him to make up for his lapses in attention, and when his time came to sum up he was always ready. He was indulgent to the accused. All the other prisoners were acquitted--the fat woman for the reason that, bad as her character might be, the characters of her drunken sailors were yet worse (therefore no credit could be attached to their evidence), and the boy who had embezzled on the ground that his superiors at the bank had been guilty of almost criminal negligence, and the four months he had been in prison already were sufficient to satisfy the claims of justice. The boy's mother, who was standing at the back, threw her arms about him and kissed him when he stepped out of the dock, and then, turning her streaming face up to the bench, she cried, "God bless you, Deemster! May you live long and every day of your life be a happy one." Back at home, Stowell plunged into the task of drawing up the report for the English authorities which was to accompany the recommendation to mercy. In two days (having his father's library to fall back upon) he knew more about the grounds upon which the prerogative of the Crown could properly be exercised than anybody in the island had ever before been required to learn, and when he had finished his task he had no misgivings. Bessie's sentence would be commuted to imprisonment. And then (life for the poor soul being at an end in the Puritanical old island) he must find some secret means of sending her away. "Never while that girl...." But wait! Only wait!