There had been rain and the frogs were croaking, but otherwise the air was still. All at once the silence of the Curraghs was broken by a low hum. Stowell's car was coming! Looking down the long straight road Gell saw its two white headlights opening the darkness like a reversed wedge. Then in a moment, unpremeditated, unprepared for, his wild thirst for personal vengeance returned to him. "Now, now," he thought, and he closed the gates to give himself time. But when Stowell came up and got out of his car to open them, and his lamps lit up his face, a mysterious wave of emotion heaved up out of the depths of Gell's soul. Something took him by the throat and cried "Stop! What are you doing?" and he dropped back into the deeper darkness of some bushes behind one of the gate-posts. He must have made a noise, for Stowell cried, "Who's there?" But Gell made no answer, and at the next moment Stowell was back in his seat and gliding up the drive. After that, horrified by the homicidal impulse which had so suddenly taken possession of him, Gell kept to his rooms for several days, going out only at night, with the collar of his coat up to his ears, to eat and drink in the tap-room of a low tavern on the quay. He had been denying himself to everybody who called at his chambers, but one morning there came an unsteady knock, followed by a peremptory voice, saying, "Alick, let me in!" It was his father, and an inherited instinct of obedience compelled him to open the door. He was shocked to see the change in the Speaker. His burly figure had become slack, his clothes (especially his trousers) baggy, his long beard thinner and more white, the crown of his head bald. Only his red eyes, with their unquenchable fire, remained the same. The old man sat down heavily with his stick between his knees, and his trembling hands on its ebony handle. "I didn't expect that I should have to come here, but Farrell says that since that trial at Castletown you have not been responsible, and if things go farther he'll have to put you away." "Put me away?" "Don't you understand?--the asylum." "He doesn't know, father, and neither do you...." "I don't want to know. If you had listened to me long ago this wouldn't have happened. But I'm not here to reproach you. I'm here to advise you to do something for your own good--mine, too, everybody's." "What is that, father?" Gell had expected the usual storm and his father's emotion was moving him deeply. "Leave the island before anything worse happens. Look" (the Speaker drew a stout envelope from his breast pocket), "I've just been to the bank for you. A thousand pounds in Bank of England notes, and if it's not enough there's more where that came from. Take it and go away at once--to America--anywhere." Alick drew back and his lips tightened. "This is a trick to get me to desert Bessie," he thought. "I can't do it," he said, and he pushed back the old man's trembling hand.