"Oh, but she will, boy, she will," said Janet, and then she left him, for he was almost undressed by this time, to get into bed and dream. III At length, Victor Stowell's term as a student-at-law came to an end and he was examined for the Manx bar. The examiner was the junior Deemster of the island--Deemster Taubman, an elderly man with a yellow and wrinkled face which put you in mind of sour cream. He was a bachelor, notoriously hard on the offences of women, having been jilted, so rumor said, by one of them (a well-to-do widow), on whose person or fortune he had set his heart or expectations. Stowell and Gell went up together, being students of the same year, and Deemster Taubman received them at his home, two mornings running, in his dressing-gown and slippers. Stowell's fame had gone before him, so he got off lightly; but Gell came in for a double dose of the examiner's severity. "Mr. Gell," said Deemster Taubman, "if somebody consulted you in the circumstance that he had lent five hundred pounds on a promissory note, payable upon demand, but without security, to a rascal (say a widow woman) who refused to pay and declared her intention of leaving the island to-morrow and living abroad, what would you advise your client to do for the recovery of his money?" Alick had not the ghost of an idea, but knowing Deemster Taubman was vain, and thinking to flatter him, he said, "I should advise my client, your Honour, to lay the facts, in an _ex parte_ petition before your Honour at your Honour's next Court" (it was to be held a fortnight later) "and be perfectly satisfied with your Honour's judgment." "Dunce!" said Deemster Taubman, and sitting down to his desk, he advised the Governor to admit Mr. Stowell but remand Mr. Gell for three months' further study. Victor telegraphed the good news to his father, packed up his belongings in his lodging at Athol Street, and took the next train back to Ballamoar. Young Robbie Creer met him at the station with the dog-cart, and took up his luggage, but Victor was too excited to ride further, so he walked home by a short cut across the Curragh. His spirits were high, for after many a sickening heartache from hope deferred (the harder to bear because it had to be concealed) he had done something to justify himself. It wasn't much, it was only a beginning, but he saw himself going to Government House one day soon on a thrilling errand that would bring somebody back to the island who had been too long away from it. Of course he must speak to his own father first, and naturally he must tell Janet. But seeing no difficulties in these quarters he went swinging along the Curragh lane, with the bees humming in the gold of the gorse on either side of him and the sea singing under a silver haze beyond, until he came to the wicket gate on the west of the tall elms and passed through to the silence inside of them.