When Stowell reached Government House he found the Governor in the garden, bareheaded and smoking a cigar of which he was obviously trying to preserve the ash, while he watched his gardener at his work of repairing the ravages of last night's storm among the flower-beds. "Ah, you've come at last! But you have just missed Fenella. She has gone to Castletown--that girl again, I suppose." "I know. I saw her. That's the matter I've come to speak about." "So? Oblige me then by walking here so that I may keep an eye on the gardener." Stowell winced, but stepped to and fro on the path by the Governor's side while in a low tone he broached his business. "Deemster Taubman told me at Tynwald that you had reported against the Jury's recommendation." "Well?" "I thought perhaps you would permit me to explain the exact legal position." "Yes?" "It is fifty years at least since the prisoner has been executed on this island for that crime." "Fifty, is it?" The Governor blew his light blue smoke into the lighter blue air and watched it rising. "Deemster Taubman seems to think that a prisoner who has wilfully taken life is necessarily a murderer. That is wrong, Sir." "Wrong?" "Quite wrong. It is established by the laws of this and every civilised country that it is the reason of man which makes him accountable for his action and the absence of reason acquits him of the crime." "And is there any ground for thinking that this girl was not responsible?" said the Governor. "Every ground, Sir. No woman in her position ever was or can be responsible." "No? .... Gardener, don't you think those tulips...." "That's why the law of England," continued Stowell, "has ceased to look upon infanticide as a crime punishable by death. In some foreign countries it is not looked upon as a crime at all. The woman who kills her child within five days after its birth is thought to be suffering from temporary mania and therefore not guilty of murder. Besides...." "Besides--what?" Stowell breathed heavily and then said, "There are exceptional circumstances in this case which call for merciful treatment." "You mean...." "I mean," said Stowell, speaking rapidly and in a vibrating voice, "that the girl had no bad motives such as usually inspire murder--no greed, no lust, no desire for revenge. In fact, she meant no harm to anybody. On the contrary it is conceivable that she meant good--good even to her child--to save it from a life of suffering in a world in which it would have no father, no family, and nobody to care for it but its shamed and outcast mother." The Governor looked at Stowell for a moment and thought. "He's ill, and he's trying to unload his conscience." Then he said aloud, "So you've come to ask me to...." "I've come to ask you, Sir, to withdraw your objection to the recommendation to mercy, so that the death sentence may be commuted to imprisonment."