Gell stared at the blue envelope, and then with trembling fingers tore it open. It was the letter which Bessie had dictated to Fenella Stanley. She was to die, and was calling on him to save her. Through her heart-breaking words he could hear her cries and supplications. The letter had been written five days ago, and in two days more she was to be executed! Whatever he had been before, Gell was no longer a sane man now. He was thinking of Stowell and cursing him. Oh, that God would only put it in his power to punish him! Then he remembered that this was the Deemster's fortnightly Court-day. The Court began to sit at eleven, and it was now half-past ten. He would go across to the Court-house. Why not? He was an advocate--nobody dare refuse him admission to a Court of Law. And as soon as Stowell stepped on to the bench he would rise in his place and cry, "You scoundrel! Come down from the Judgment seat! Because you were rich you thought you could buy a man's soul and a woman's body. But take that, and that!" and then he would fling his father's money into Stowell's face. At that moment, having parted from the Chief Constable, Stowell was driving down the street. Gell dragged his black bag from the corner into which he had thrown it on returning from Castletown, and put on his gown without remembering that he was in his shirt-sleeves, and then his wig, without knowing that his hair was dishevelled. He was staggering from weakness and the pictures on the walls were going round him with an increasing vertigo, but he was struggling to regain his strength. He heard a step on the stair (a man's step this time) and then a firm knock at his door. "Farrell!" he thought. The Chief Constable was coming to arrest him. But nobody should do that yet--not until he had come face to face with Stowell. The knock was repeated. "Go away!" he cried. Then he pulled open the door, and found Stowell himself standing on the threshold. He fell back breathless. Stowell entered the room and closed the door behind him. III "Alick!" "Go away!" "I have something to say to you." "Go away, I tell you." "But I have something to tell you." "There's only one thing you can tell me. Is it true--is she to die?" "It .... it is so appointed." "Then take that," cried Gell, and flinging himself upon Stowell with the fury of madness he struck him in the face and laid open his cheek-bone. There was an awful silence. Gell had staggered to a bookcase behind him, expecting Stowell to strike back. But Stowell remained standing, and then said, with a break in his voice, "I have well deserved it." That was too much for Gell. He began to stammer incoherently and when he saw a streak of blood begin to flow down Stowell's cheek he broke down altogether. Out of the depths of a thousand memories of their friendship, all the way up since they were boys, a great tide of tenderness came surging over him, and he dropped into a chair and cried,