"Long ago, in Galilee, out of the supreme compassion which covered with forgiveness the transgressions of one who had sinned much but loved much, it was said, 'Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone.' We have all done something we would fain forget, and when we lay our heads on our pillow we pray that the darkness may hide it. But does anybody doubt that if the all-seeing Justice could enter this Court this day another figure would be standing there in the dock by the side of that unhappy woman--a man in scarlet uniform perhaps, with decorations on his breast, and that the Deemster would have to say to him, 'You did this, for you were the first.' Mercy, then--mercy for the beaten, the broken, the scapegoat, the sinner." People said afterwards that Stowell was a full half minute in his seat before anybody seemed to be aware that he was no longer speaking. The spectators had listened without making a sound; the jury (a panel of stolid Manx farmers) had sat without moving a muscle; the prisoner had raised her head for the first time during the trial and then dropped it lower than before and her shoulders had shaken as if from inaudible sobs; the Governor, who had all day been drawing geometrical patterns on the sheet of foolscap in front of him, had let his pencil fall and stared down at the paper, and the Deemster had looked up at the lantern light from which the sunlight (it had moved on) was now streaming upon his face, showing at last a solitary tear that was rolling slowly down his cheek to the end of his firm-set mouth. Then there was a rustle, as if the windows of a room on the edge of the sea had suddenly been thrown open. The Attorney-General was speaking again. After the defence they had just listened to (there being no evidence to rebut) he would waive his right of reply--the Crown desired justice, not revenge. The Deemster's summing-up was the shortest that had ever been heard from him. There were legal reasons which justified the taking of human life, but the cases to which they applied were few. If the jury thought the prisoner had wilfully killed her husband they would find her Guilty. If they were satisfied from what they had heard that she had reasonable grounds for thinking that a felony was being committed upon her which endangered her own life they would find her Not Guilty. Without leaving their box the jury promptly gave a verdict of Not Guilty; and then the Deemster in a loud, clear, almost triumphant voice said: "Let the prisoner be discharged." A few minutes later there was a scene of excitement on the green within the Castle walls. The spectators, being turned out of the Court-house with difficulty, were waiting for the chief actors in the life-drama to come down the stone steps, and from the private door to the Deemster's room.