CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE "AND GOD MADE MAN OF THE DUST OF THE GROUND" Stowell had travelled far by this time. When he left Government House in the heat and flame of his anger he was at war with God and man. There was a kind of self-defence in thinking that, however deep his own wrong-doing, the whole world was full of infamy. He found that news of the forthcoming execution had reached Fort Anne before he returned to it. To avoid the whispering groups in the public rooms he packed his bag and took the afternoon train to Ballamoar. Alone in the railway carriage he had time to review the situation. His visit to the Governor had been a wretched failure. But even if it had been a success what would have been the result to Bessie Collister? Substitution of the jail for the gallows. Instead of death, three years, five years, perhaps ten years' imprisonment. Thank God he had not succeeded! "But what am I to do now?" he asked himself. Appeal to London? Useless! The Home officials would support the resident authority, and, having made a hideous error, they would be reluctant to correct it. "Then what can I do?" he thought. Suddenly he saw that every argument he had used with the Governor against putting Bessie to death applied equally to keeping her in prison. This was not a question of degrees of guilt--of murder or manslaughter. Either Bessie was guilty of murder and ought to be executed or she was not guilty (not being responsible) and ought to be set at liberty. "Then the law under which she has been condemned is a crime," he thought. This terrified him. All his inherited instinct of reverence for the justice and majesty of the law revolted. "The law a crime! Good heavens, what am I thinking about?" And yet why not? Why had there been so much misery in the world? Was it because of the crimes committed against the law? No, but chiefly because of the crimes committed by the law. Yes, that was the real key to the long martyrdom of man throughout the ages. "If a law is a crime it ought to be broken," he told himself. But how! There was only one proper way in a free country--through Parliament and by the slow uprising of the human conscience. But that was a long process, and meantime what would happen in this case? Bessie would be dead and buried! That must not be! No, the law that had condemned Bessie Collister must be broken at once--now! "But who is to break it?" He trembled at that question, but found only one answer. It shivered at the back of his mind like the white water over a reef at the neck of a narrow sea, and it was not at first that he dared to think of it. But at length he saw that since he had been the instrument of the law in dooming Bessie to death it was he who must set her free. When he reached this point on his dark way he was horrified. "What? A Judge break the law!"