Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT: The Trial

For a good hour before the arrival of the Deemster, Castle Rushen had been full of activity. In the Court-house itself, warm with sunshine from the lantern light, Robbie Stephen, the chief Coroner of the island, who looked like a shaggy old sheep-dog, had been selecting candidates for the Jury-box.

Seventy-two of them had been summoned, six from each of twelve parishes, and now he was reducing the number to thirty-two, twelve for the Jury and twenty more to meet the contingency of arbitrary challenging.

Everybody claimed exemption, but the Coroner listened to none. Standing back to the empty bench, swelling with importance and with his seventy-two men huddled together like sheep at one side of the chamber, he called them out at his discretion and with a wave of the hand passed them over to the other side to wait for the trial.

"Now, then, Willie Kinnish, thou'rt a good man; over with thee." "No, no, Mr. Stephen, you must excuse me to-day, Sir." "Tut, tut! You Maughold men haven't served on a jury these seven years." "But I have fifty head of sheep going to Ramsey mart this morning, and what's to pay my half year's rent if I'm not there to sell them?" "Chut, man! Lave that to herself. She's thy better half, isn't she?"

Meantime, in the chill corridors underground the jailer and his turnkey were rattling their keys, opening the doors of the cells and shouting to the prisoners to make ready for the Court.

"Patrick Kelly! Charles Quiggin! Nancy Kegeen! John Corlett! Cæsar Crow! Robert Quine! Elizabeth Corteen!"

Hearing her name called, Bessie, having no fear, got up from her plank bed, and when Mrs. Mylrea, the woman warder, with her short, loud, difficult breathing, brought back her cloak and fur hat, she put them on leisurely.

"Quick, girl!" said the warder. "You don't want to keep the Dempster waiting, do you?"

Bessie laughed, but made no answer. At the next moment she was in the darkness of the corridor, walking at the end of a short procession of other prisoners, and at the next she was drawn up, with her prison companions, into the blinding sunlight of a little paved quadrangle which was surrounded by high walls and had the sound of the sea coming down into it from the free world outside.

By this time the Court-house upstairs was in a state of yet greater activity. The thirty-two possible jurymen, having reconciled themselves to being "trapped," were standing under the jury-box, talking of the weather which was bringing the crops on rapidly and would increase the price of early potatoes. Inspectors of police were bustling about; Joshua Scarff was laying a green portfolio with paper, pens and ink, on the bench in front of the Deemster's scarlet armchair, and a number of advocates were coming in laughing by a door which communicated with their room off the ramparts.

The last of the advocates to enter was Alick Gell. He took a seat immediately in front of the empty dock, looking pale and worn and scarcely able to hold the papers which he carried in his nervous hands. A little later the Attorney-General, who was to prosecute for the Crown, came in with a grave face, followed by old Hudgeon, his junior, with a sour one. And shortly before eleven (the hour appointed for the beginning of the trial) a lady was brought by an Inspector from the door to the Judge's room and seated beside Gell in front of the dock. It was Fenella.

Then the outer doors to the court-yard were thrown open and the public admitted. They rushed and tore their way into the Court-house, men and women together, talking and laughing loudly. The big clock in the Castle tower was heard to strike, and the Inspector, standing near the dais, cried in a loud voice,

"Silence in Court!"

The babel of voice subsided and everybody rose who had been seated. Then the Court came in and took their seats on the bench of judgment--the Governor in his soldier's uniform, and Stowell and the Clerk of the Rolls in their Judges' wigs and gowns.

It was remarked that the new Deemster looked ill and almost old. A wave of sympathy went out to him from the first. It was whispered among the spectators that he had come straight from a sick-bed, and that the Governor insisted on his presence, saying he must have him "dead or alive."

"Coroner, fence the Court," said the Governor, and then old Stephen, who had already taken his place in the Coroner's box, raising the pitch of his voice, recited the ancient formula:

"_I do hereby fence this Court in the name of our Sovereign Lord the King. I charge that no person shall quarrel, bawl or molest the audience, that all persons shall answer to their names when called. I charge this audience to witness that this Court is fenced; I charge this audience to witness that this Court is fenced; I charge this whole audience to witness that this Court is fenced._"

Everybody knew that it was for the Deemster to speak next, but for a sensible moment he did not do so. Then he said, almost beneath his breath,

"Let the prisoners be brought in."

In the continued silence there came the sound of bustle outside, with the patter of feet on the pavement below, and then a shuffling of steps on the stairs. The prisoners were coming up, but the police had difficulty in clearing a passage for them. The voice of the jailer, Tommy Vondy, was heard to cry, "Make way!" There was a period of waiting. At one moment the people in court caught the sound from the staircase of a scarcely believable thing--the laugh of a woman? Who could she be?

At length the prisoners were brought in, pushed through the throng that stood thick at the back, and hurried into the dock, which was like a long pew behind the circular seats of the advocates and directly in front of the bench.

There were seven of them, a sorry company, two women and five men, with nothing in common save the pallid, almost pasty complexions which had come of the dank air they had been living in.

There was another moment of silence. It was time for the Deemster to take the pleas, but again he did not speak immediately. He had the look of a man who was struggling against physical weakness. The blood rushed to his pale face and as quickly disappeared. "He's not fit for it to-day," people whispered.

But at the next moment, in a low voice, and with the appearance of one who was making an effort to command his strength, the Deemster was reading the indictments.

He took the prisoners in the order in which they stood before him, beginning with the one on the extreme left. He was a very young man, almost a boy, with a face that might have been that of his mother when she was a girl. His name was Quiggin; he had been a bank clerk and was charged with embezzlement. He pleaded Guilty and looked down as if he expected the earth to open under his feet.

The next was a gross, fat, middle-aged woman with red cheeks and many heavy gold rings on her stubby fingers. Her name was Kegeen, and she was charged with robbing drunken sailors in a house she had kept in an alley off the south quay. In a torrent of words she denied everything and accused the police of black-mailing her.

The last was Bessie Collister and the Deemster paused perceptibly when he came to her.

She had carried herself straight when she entered the Court and was now sitting with her head thrown back. But, seeing that of all the prisoners she was the one on whom the eyes of the spectators were fastened, she had reached up her hands to a veil which was wrapped about her fur hat and drawn it down over her face. Observing this at the last moment, and thinking it the cause of the Deemster's silence, the jailer said in an audible whisper,

"Put up your fall, Bessie."

She did so, disclosing her thin white face and large eyes. And then in a voice so low that it would have been scarcely audible but for the strained silence in the court-house, the Deemster said,

"Elizabeth Corteen, stand up."

Bessie rose without embarrassment and fixed her eyes on the Deemster. And then he charged her.

"It is charged against you that on or about the fifth day of April--in the parish of Ballaugh, in the Isle of Man, feloniously, wilfully and of your malice aforethought, you did kill and murder a certain male child, contrary to the form of the Statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his Crown and dignity. How say you, are you guilty or not guilty?"

Without hesitation or halting, looking straight into the eyes of the Judge and speaking in a voice so clear that it resounded through the silent Court-house, Bessie answered,

"Not Guilty."

Her tone and bearing had gone against her. "The huzzy!" whispered one of the female spectators. "She might have more shame for her position, anyway. And did you see the way the forward piece looked up at the Deemster?"

II

It was not until Stowell had stepped on to the bench that he had realized what he had done for himself.

When he had asked for the prisoners to be brought in, and Bessie had come at the end of the short line and taken her place in the dock with the constable behind her, he had been seized with a feeling of choking shame.

That woman, looking so much older, with pallid cheeks sucked in by suffering, could she be the same? All the barrage he had built up for the protection of his position as Judge seemed to have gone down at the first sight of the girl's face. What a scoundrel he had been!

From that moment a whirl of confused emotions had held possession of him. When the time came to charge the prisoner he had felt as if he were reading out his own indictment. And when she had looked up fearlessly into his face and pleaded Not Guilty it was the same as if she were accusing himself.

After that he had a sense of acting as a detached person. In a strange voice, which did not seem to be his own, he heard himself asking the Attorney-General which case he wished to take first. The Attorney answered, "The murder case," and after the Clerk of the Rolls had read out the names of the jurymen, and they had taken their places in the jury-box, he heard himself, in the same strange voice, swearing them on the holy evangelists to "a true verdict give, according to the evidence and the laws of this isle."

When he turned his eyes back, Bessie was alone in the dock, save for the woman warder (with blue lips and a look of suffering) who sat at the farther end of it. She was still looking fearlessly up at him, and in front of her sat two others whose eyes were also fixed on his face--Alick Gell and Fenella. At that sight a terrible feeling took hold of him--that these three were the real judges in this trial and he was the prisoner at the bar.

He did not recover from the shock of this feeling until the Attorney-General began on the prosecution.

The Attorney, usually so kindly, was bitterly severe. The time had gone by when it could be said with truth that crime was practically unknown in the Isle of Man. Here, as elsewhere, crimes of all kinds were only too common, and not least common was the crime of infanticide.

The present case was one of peculiar atrocity. The prisoner was a young woman who might be said, not uncharitably, to have inherited a lawless disposition. After a reckless girlhood she had disappeared from her home, for no apparent reason, rather less than a year ago and remained away (nobody knew where or in what company) until a few weeks ago. She had then been ill and was put to bed in a condition which gave only too much reason for the belief that she was about to become a mother. That was on the fifth of April and two days later the body of a new-born infant had been found in a remote place, wrapped up and hidden away.

It would be established by witnesses that the infant had been born alive, that it had died by suffocation, and that the prisoner (incredible as it might appear) had been seen to bury it.

"Such," said the Attorney-General, "are the facts of this most unhappy case, and though the prisoner pleads Not Guilty, the evidence which I shall now call will leave no doubt that the child was her child and that it died by her hands. Therefore I ask (as well for the sake of humanity as for the good name of this island) that the Jury shall give such a verdict against the prisoner as will act as a deterrent on the heartless women, unworthy of the name of mothers, who, to save themselves from the just consequences of their evil conduct, are taking the innocent lives which under God they gave."

There had been a tense atmosphere in the Court-house during the Attorney-General's speech, and when it was over there were half-suppressed murmurs, hostile to the prisoner.

Looking towards the dock Stowell saw that Bessie was quite unmoved, but that Fenella, in front of her, was flushed and hot, and Gell's lower lip was trembling. Stowell was conscious of a complicated struggle going on within him and then of a blind and headlong resolution. He was going to save that girl--he was going to save her at all costs!

The first witness was the constable, a middle-aged man with a sour expression. After he had been sworn by the Deemster, the Attorney-General examined him.

His name was Cain and he was constable for the parish in which the crime had been committed. On the morning of April the seventh he received an information from Old Will Skillicorne of Baldromma-beg that something had been seen under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_. He had gone there and found the body of a new-born child, and had taken it to Dr. Clucas, who had made an examination. Later the same day he had taken statements from Old Will and his wife, relating to the prisoner, and had sent them up to the Chief Constable of the island at Douglas. The Chief Constable had ordered him to make a house-to-house visitation through the parish to see if any other woman might have been the mother of the child. He had done so with the result that the prisoner was the only person who had come under suspicion. She was then ill in bed, but in due course he had arrested her, and charged her before the High Bailiff, who had committed her for trial at that court--sending her to the hospital in the meantime.

With obvious nervousness Gell rose to cross-examine the witness.

"How far is it from the prisoner's home to the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_?"

"Half a mile, maybe."

"What kind of road would you call it?"

"Rough and thorny, most of it."

Gell sat with a look of satisfaction, and the Deemster leaned forward.

"Constable," he said, "when you made your house-to-house visitation did you go beyond the boundary of your parish?"

"No, your Honour."

"Where is the boundary?"

"The glen is the boundary--the western side of it, Sir."

"How near to the western boundary are the nearest houses in the next parish?"

"Four hundred yards, perhaps."

"How many of them are there?"

"Fifteen or twenty, your Honour."

"Yet, though you visited the prisoner's home, which was half-a-mile from the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_, you did not visit--you were not told to visit--the fifteen or twenty houses which were only four hundred yards away?"

"They were not in my parish, your Honour."

There was audible drawing of breath in court. Fenella, who had been reaching forward, dropped back, and Gell's pale face was smiling.

The next to be called was Dr. Clucas. His hands were twitching and his rubicund face was moist with perspiration--he was obviously an unwilling witness.

Yes, when the constable brought the body of the child he made a post-mortem examination. Applying the usual medical tests he came to the conclusion that the child had been born alive and had died of suffocation. On the morning of the following day he had been called in to see the prisoner. She was suffering from extreme exhaustion--a condition not inconsistent with the idea of recent confinement.

Gell, gathering strength but still agitated, rose again.

"How long had the child lived?"

"An hour or two, probably."

"And how long had it been dead?"

"Twenty-four to thirty hours at the outside."

"Is it your experience that within twenty-four to thirty hours after confinement a woman can walk half-a-mile along a rough and thorny road and carry a burden?"

"It certainly is not, Sir."

Gell sat with a piteous smile of triumph on his pale face, and the Deemster leaned forward again.

"Doctor," he said, "you speak of applying the usual medical tests--are they entirely reliable?"

"They are not infallible, your Honour. They have been known to fail."

"Then this child may have breathed and yet not had a separate existence?"

"It may--it is just possible, Sir."

"And the unhappy mother, whoever she may be, though obviously guilty of concealing its birth, may not have been guilty of the much greater crime of killing it?"

"That's so .... she may not, your Honour."

There was a still more audible drawing of breath in court when the doctor stood down. Fenella's eyes were shining and Gell's were sparkling with excitement.

The next witness was Bridget Skillicorne. She wore a big poke bonnet and a Paisley shawl which smelt strongly of lavender. She was very voluble (provoking ripples of laughter by her broad Manx tongue) and the Attorney-General had more than he could do to restrain her.

Aw, 'deed yes, she remembered the night of the sixth-seventh April, for wasn't it the night she had a cow down with the gripes? Colic they were calling it, but wutching it was, and she believed in her heart she knew who had wutched the craythur. So she sent her ould man over to the Ballawhaine for a taste of something to take off the evil eye. And while she was sitting in the cowhouse itself, waiting for the man to come home (it was terr'ble slow the men were, both in their heads and their legs), she saw the light of a fire that had blown up on the mountains. "Will it reach the hay in my haggard?" she thought, and out she went to look. And, behold ye, what did she see but the glen as light as day and a woman on her knees putting something under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_. Who was she? The Collister girl of course. Sure? Sarten sure! And as soon as it was day she went down to the stone to see what the girl had left there. What was it? A baby--what else? Lying there in a scarf, poor bogh, like a little white mollag.

"What's mollag?" (Bridget's Manx had gone beyond the Attorney, but the jurymen were smiling.) "Ask them ones--_they_ know."

Gell, with a newspaper-cutting in his hand, rose to cross-examine the old woman.

"You and your husband are sub-tenants of the prisoner's step-father, isn't that so?"

"Certainly we are--you ought to know that much yourself, Sir."

"I see you told the High Bailiff you were on bad terms with your landlord."

"Bad terms, is it? I wouldn't bemane myself with being on any terms at all with the like."

"He threatened to turn you out of your croft at Hollantide, didn't he?"

"He did, the dirt!"

"And you said you'd see him thrown out before you?"

"It's like I did, and it's like I will, too, for if your father, the Spaker...."

The Attorney-General rose in alarm. "Is it suggested by these questions that the witness has an animus against the prisoner's family and is conspiring to convict her?"

"That," said Gell, in a ringing voice, "is precisely what is suggested."

"What?" cried Bridget, bobbing her poke bonnet across at Gell. "Is it a liar you're making me out? Me, that has known you since you were a loblolly-boy in a jacket?"

The Deemster intervened to pacify the old woman, and then took her in hand himself.

"Bridget," he said, "how far is it from your house on the brews down to the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_? Is it three or four hundred yards, think you?"

"Maybe it is. But it's yourself knows as well as I do, your Honour."

"Is your sight still so good that you can see a woman to know her at that distance?"

"Aw, well, not so bad anyway. And then wasn't it as bright as day, Sir?"

"Listen. This court-house is not more than fifteen yards across, and less than ten to any point from the box in which you stand. Do you think you could recognise anybody you know in this audience?"

"Anybody I know? Recognise? Why not, your Honour?"

"You know Cain the constable?"

"'Deed I do, and his mother before him. A dacent man enough, but stupid for all...."

"Well, he is one of the three constables who are now standing at this end of the jury-box--which of them is he?"

"Which? Do you say which, your Honour?" said Bridget, screwing up her wrinkled face. "Why, the off-one, surely."

There was a burst of irrepressible laughter in court--Bridget had chosen wrongly.

The next witness was old Will Skillicorne. He was wearing his chapel clothes, with black kid gloves, large and baggy, and was carrying a silk hat that was as straight and long and almost as brown as a length of stove-pipe. When called upon to swear he said he believed the old Book said "Swear not at all," and when asked what he was he answered that he believed he was "a man of God."

Aw, yes, he believed he remembered the night of the six-seventh of April, and he was returning home from an errand into Andreas when the prisoner passed him coming down the glen.

"At what time would that be?" asked Gell.

"Two or three in the morning, I belave."

"Then it would be still quite dark?"

"I was carrying my lantern, I belave."

"What was the prisoner doing when she passed you?"

"Covering her eyes with shame, I belave, as well she might be."

"Then you did not see her face?"

"I belave I did, though."

"Believe! Believe! Did you or did you not--yes or no?"

"I belave I did, Sir."

"Mr. Skillicorne," said the Deemster, "you attach importance to your belief, I see."

The old man drew himself up, and answered in his preaching tone,

"It's the rock of my salvation, Sir."

"Your wife told us that your errand into Andreas was to see the Ballawhaine about your sick cow. Is that the well-known witch-doctor?"

"I .... I .... I belave it is, Sir."

"And what did he give you?"

"A .... a wisp of straw and a few good words, Sir."

"Then you believe in that too--that a wisp of straw and a few good words...."

But the Deemster could not finish--a ripple of laughter that had been running through the Court having risen to a roar which he did not attempt to repress. "He has made up his mind about this case," said someone.

The Attorney-General, who was looking hot and embarrassed, called the last of his witnesses. This was the house-doctor at the hospital, the young man with the thin hair and pugnacious mouth.

Asked if he remembered the prisoner being brought into hospital he said "Perfectly." Had he formed any opinion of her condition? He had. What was it? That she had been confined less than five days before. What made him think so? First her unwillingness to be examined and then....

"She refused?"

"She did, your Honour, and threatened violence, but she became unconscious soon afterwards and then...."

"Stop!" said the Deemster, and looking down at the Attorney he asked if the High Bailiff, in committing the prisoner, had ordered that she should be examined.

The Attorney-General shook his head helplessly, whereupon the Deemster, with a severe face, turned back to the witness.

"You are a qualified medical practitioner?"

"I am," said the witness, straightening himself.

"Then of course you know that for a doctor to examine a woman against her will and without a magistrate's order is to commit an offence for which he may be severely punished?"

The pugnacious mouth opened like a dying oyster.

"Y-es, your Honour."

"Therefore you did not examine her?"

"N-o, your Honour."

"And you know nothing of her condition?"

"No----"

"Stand down, Sir."

There was a commotion in the court-house. The prisoner's face was still calm, but Fenella's was aglow and Gell's was ablaze.

"Mr. Attorney," said the Deemster quietly, "have you any further evidence?"

The Attorney, who had been whispering hotly to Hudgeon, said,

"No, there was a nurse who might have given conclusive evidence, but, thinking the doctor's would be sufficient, my colleague has allowed her to leave the island. No, that is my case, your Honour."

Stowell, secretly glad at the turn things had taken, was about to put an end to the trial, when Gell, intoxicated by his success, leapt up and said,

"I might ask the Court to dismiss this case immediately on the ground that there is nothing to put before the jury. But the wicked and cruel charge may follow the accused all her life, therefore I propose, with the Court's permission, to waive my right of reply and call such positive evidence of her innocence as will enable her to leave this court without a stain on her character."

"The fool!" thought Stowell. But just at that moment the clock of the Castle struck one, and the Governor said,

"The Court will adjourn for luncheon and resume at two."

As Stowell stepped off the bench his eye caught a glimpse of the inscription on a brass plate which had lately been affixed to the wall under his father's portrait--

"_Justice is the most sacred thing on earth._"

His head dropped; he felt like a traitor.

III

When the trial was resumed the Attorney-General had not returned to court, so Hudgeon represented the Crown. He was offensive from the first, but Gell, whose spirits had risen perceptibly, was not to be put out.

The witness he called first was Mrs. Collister. The old mother had to be helped into the witness-box. Her poor face was wet with recent tears, and in administering the oath Stowell hardly dared to look at her. Remembering the admissions she had made to him at Ballamoar he knew that she had come to give false evidence in her daughter's cause.

She made a timid, reluctant and sometimes inaudible witness. More than once Hudgeon complained that he could not hear, and Gell, with great tenderness, asked her to speak louder.

"Speak up, Mrs. Collister. There's nothing to fear. The Court will protect you," he said. But Stowell, who saw what was hidden behind the veil of the old woman's soul, knew it was another and higher audience she was afraid of.

With many pauses she repeated, in answer to Gell's questions, the story she had told before--that her daughter had returned home ill on the fifth of April, that she had put her to bed in the dairy-loft and that the girl had never left it until Cain the constable came to arrest her.

"You saw her day and night while she was at your house?"

"Aw, yes, Sir, last thing at night and first thing in the morning."

"And you know nothing that conflicts with what she says--that she never had a child and therefore could not have killed it?"

"'Deed no, Sir, nothing whatever."

She had answered in a tremulous voice which the Deemster found deeply affecting. Once or twice she had lifted her weak eyes to his with a pitiful look of supplication, and he had had to turn his own eyes away. "I should do it myself," he thought.

"And now, Mrs. Collister," said Gell, "if you were here this morning you heard what the Attorney-General said--that your daughter had been of a lawless disposition and had run away from home without apparent reason. Is there any truth in that?"

"Bessie was always a good girl, Sir. It was lies the gentleman was putting on her."

"Is the prisoner your husband's daughter?"

"No, Sir," the old woman faltered, "his step-daughter."

"Is it true that her step-father has always been hard on her?"

The old woman hesitated, then faltered again, "Middling hard anyway."

"Don't be afraid. Remember, your daughter's liberty, perhaps her life, are in peril. Tell the Jury what happened on the day she left home."

Then nervously, fearfully, looking round the Court-house as if in terror of being seen or heard, the old woman told the story of the first Saturday in August.

"So your husband deliberately shut the girl out of the house in the middle of the night, knowing well she had nowhere else to go to?"

"Yes, if you plaze, Sir."

"It's a lie--a scandalous lie!" cried somebody at the back of the court.

"Who's that?" asked the Governor, and he was told by the Inspector of Police (who was already laying hold of the interrupter) that it was the husband of the witness.

"A respectable man's character is being sworn away," cried Dan. "Put me in the box and I'll swear it's a lie."

In the tumult that followed the Deemster raised his hand.

"This Court has been fenced," he said severely, "and if anybody attempts to brawl here...."

"Then let me be sworn. I'm only a plain Manxman, blood and bone, but I can tell the truth as well as some that make a bigger mouth."

"Behave yourself!"

"Give me a chance to save my character and fix the disgrace of these bad doings where it belongs."

"I give you fair warning...."

"Put the saddle on the right horse, Dempster. He's near enough to yourself, anyway."

"Silence!"

"Why doesn't he come out into the open, not hide behind the skirts of a girl with a by-child?"

"Remove that man to the cells, and keep him there until the trial is over."

"What?" cried Dan, in a loud voice.

"Remove him!" cried the Deemster, in a voice still louder, and at the next moment, Dan, shaking his fist at the prisoner and cursing her, was hustled out of Court.

When the tempestuous scene was over and silence had been restored, the witness was trembling and covering her face in her hands and Hudgeon was on his feet to cross-examine her.

"I think your father was the late John Corteen, the Methodist?"

"Yes, sir."

"He was a good man, wasn't he?"

"As good a man as ever walked the world, Sir."

"He had a reputation for strict truthfulness--isn't that so?"

"'Deed it is, Sir. The old Dempster would take his word without asking him to swear to it."

"You were much attached to him, were you not?"

The old woman wiped her eyes, which were wet but shining.

"That's truth enough, Sir."

"And now he's dead and I daresay you sometimes pray for the time when you'll see him again?"

"Morning and night, every day of my life since I closed the man's dying eyes for him."

The advocate turned his gleaming eyes to the Jury and the side of his powerful face to the witness.

"You are a Methodist yourself, aren't you?"

"Such as I am, Sir."

"And as a Methodist you are taught to believe that truth is sacred and that a lie (no matter under what temptation told) is a thing of the devil and no good can come of it?"

The old woman faltered something that was barely heard, and then the big advocate turned quickly round on her, and said in a stern voice, looking full into her timid eyes,

"Mrs. Collister, as you are a Christian woman and expect to meet your father some day, will you swear that when your daughter returned home on the fifth of April you did not see at a glance that she was about to become a mother of a child?"

The old woman shuddered as if she had been smitten by an invisible hand, breathed audibly, tried to speak, stopped, then closed her eyes, swayed a little and laid hold of the bar in front of her.

"Inspector, see to the witness quickly," cried the Deemster.

At the next moment the old woman was being helped out of the witness-box and borne towards the door, where, realising what she had done for her daughter, she broke into a fit of weeping, which rent the silence of the Court until the door had closed behind her.

"In that cry," said the advocate, "the Jury has heard the answer to my question. It is proof enough that the prisoner had a child, and that her mother knew it."

"If so, it is proof of something else," cried Gell (he had leapt to his feet and was speaking in a thrilling voice), "that a strong man can find it in his heart to use his great forensic skill to crush a poor weak woman who is fighting for the life of her child. All his life through he has been doing the same thing--driving people into prison and dragging them to the gallows. He has made his name and grown rich and fat on it. God save me from a life like that! I am only a young lawyer and he is an old one, but may I live in poverty and die in the streets rather than outrage my humanity and degrade my profession by using the lures of the procurator and the arts of the hangman."

There was a sensation in Court. One of the younger advocates was heard to say, "My God, who thought Alick Gell was a fool?" And another who remembered the "Fanny" case in the Douglas police-courts, said, "He's got a bit of his own back, anyway."

When the commotion subsided, Hudgeon, with a face of scarlet, appealed to the Court:

"Your Honour, I ask your protection against this outrageous slander."

"Since you appeal to me," said the Deemster (whose own face was aflame), "I can only say that you deserved every word of it."

Hudgeon tried to speak, but could not, his voice being choked in his throat. And seeing that the Attorney-General had come back to Court (he had just returned with Cain the constable, who was carrying a parcel) he picked up his bag and fled.

Gell's time had come at last--the great moment he had been waiting for so long. Although he had been shaken for an instant by Mrs. Collister's silence he was not afraid now. He was going to play his last and greatest card--put the prisoner in the box to demolish for ever the monstrous accusation that had been intended to ruin the life of an innocent woman. The Deemster trembled as he saw Gell look round the Court with a confident smile before he called his witness.

Bessie, whose big eyes had flamed with fury during her mother's cross-examination, passed with a firm step from the dock to the witness-box. In answer to Gell's questions she repeated the evidence she had given before the High Bailiff, only more emphatically and with a certain note of defiance.

When the Attorney-General rose to cross-examine her, it was observed that he, too, had an air of confidence, as if something had become known to him since morning.

"Do you adhere to your plea?" he asked.

"Indeed I do. Why shouldn't I?" said Bessie.

"Think again before it is too late. Do you still say that you have never had a child, and therefore never killed and never buried one?"

"Certainly I say so," said Bessie. "I don't know what you are talking of."

"Constable," said the Attorney, turning to Cain, "open your parcel."

There was a whispering among the spectators in Court, while the constable was cutting the string and opening the brown-paper parcel. The Deemster was shuddering, Gell's lower lip was trembling, and Fenella (who was sitting, as before, in front of the dock) was breathing deeply. The prisoner alone was unmoved. The sun (it was now going round to the West) was shining down on her from the lantern light. It lit up with pitiful vividness her thin white face with its look of confidence and contempt.

"Do you know what this is?" asked the Attorney, holding up a portion of a white silk scarf.

Bessie started as if she had seen a ghost. Then, recovering herself and turning her eyes away, she said, remembering what Gell had told her,

"I know nothing about it."

"You have never seen it before?"

"I know nothing about it."

The Attorney-General put the scarf outstretched on the table in front of him, and held up a narrower strip of the same material.

"Do you know anything about this, then?"

Bessie gasped and was silent for a moment. Then she said again, but with a stammer,

"I know nothing about it."

"Will you swear that it never belonged to you?"

A stabbing memory came back to Bessie. She remembered what she had heard about "a remnant" when the constables were ranging her room, and seeing no way of escape by further denial she said,

"Oh yes, I remember it now. I found it on the road when I was on my way home and bound it about my hat to keep it from blowing off in the wind."

The silence which had fallen upon the Court was broken by an audible drawing of breath. Gell, who had risen and leaned forward, dropped back.

"But if you found it on the road, how do you account for the fact that it has your name stamped on the corner of it? See--_Bessie_."

Bessie was speechless for another moment. Then she said,

"Bessie is a common name, isn't it?"

"But how do you account for the further fact that these two pieces fit each other exactly?" asked the Attorney--laying the narrow strip by the broader portion.

Bessie became dizzy and confused.

"I can't account for it. I know nothing about it," she said.

The Deemster, who was breathing with difficulty, asked the Attorney what he suggested by the exhibits. The Attorney answered,

"The larger piece, your Honour, is the scarf which the body of the child was found in, while the narrower one was discovered in the prisoner's room, and the suggestion is that, taken together, they form a chain of convincing evidence that she is guilty of the crime with which she is charged."

Gell leapt to his feet. He had recognised the scarf as a present of his own on Bessie's last birthday, and his great faith in the girl was breaking down, yet in a husky voice he said,

"Give her time, your Honour. She may have some explanation."

The Deemster signified assent, and then Gell, stepping closer to the witness-box, said,

"Be calm and think again. Don't answer hastily. Everything depends on your reply. Are you sure the scarf was not yours and that you lost the larger piece of it? Think carefully, I beg, I pray."

The advocate was losing himself, yet nobody protested. At length Bessie, with the wild eyes of a captured animal, broke into violent cries.

"Oh, why are you all torturing me? Wasn't it enough to torture my mother? I know nothing about it."

Gell dropped back to his seat. There was a profound silence. The great clock of the Castle was heard to strike four. The Deemster felt as if every stroke were beating on his brain. At length he said,

"A new fact has been introduced by the prosecution and it is only right that the defence should have time to consider it. It is now four o'clock. The Court will adjourn until morning. It is not for me to anticipate the evidence which the accused may give when the Court resumes, but if in the interval she can remember anything which will put a new light on the serious fact the Attorney-General has just disclosed, nothing she has said in her agitation to-day shall prejudice what she may say to-morrow."

He paused for a moment and then (with difficulty maintaining an equal voice) he added,

"It sometimes happens that a young woman in the position of the accused mistakes concealment for the much more serious crime of murder."

He paused again and then said,

"Whatever the facts in this unhappy case may prove to be, if I may speak to that mystery of a woman's heart which is truly said to be sacred even in its shame, I will say, 'Tell the truth, the whole truth; it will be best for you, best for everybody.'"

"The Court stands adjourned until eleven in the morning," said the Governor. "Meantime, let the advocate for the defence see the accused and give her the benefit of his legal advice and assistance. Jailer, look to the Jury that they are properly lodged in the Castle, and see that they hold no communication with persons outside."

IV

The Judges, the advocates and the spectators were gone, and Gell was alone in the Court-house. He was like a drowning man in an empty sea, clinging to an upturned boat.

Time after time he gathered up his papers and put them in his bag, then took them out again and spread them before him. At length, rising with a haggard face, he went downstairs with a heavy step.

At the door to the private entrance he came upon Fenella, who was waiting for her father. Her eyes were red as if she had been weeping, but they were blazing with anger also.

"Are you going down to her as the Governor suggested?"

"I cannot! I dare not!" he replied. And then, as if struck by a sudden thought he said, "But won't you go?"

"You wish me to speak to her instead of you?"

"Won't you? If she has anything to say she'll say it more freely to a woman."

Fenella looked at him for a moment.

"Very well, I'll go if you are willing to take the consequences."

"The consequences? To me? That's nothing--nothing whatever. Go to her, for God's sake. I'll wait here for you."

In the Deemster's room the Governor was putting on his military overcoat. He was not too well satisfied with himself, and as the only means of self-justification he was nursing a dull anger against Stowell.

"Well, we can only go on with it. There's nothing else to do now. Unfortunate--damnably unfortunate!"

A few minutes later, Stowell, sitting at the table in wig and gown, heard the clash of steel outside (a company of the regiment quartered in the town were acting as a guard of honour) and saw through the window the Governor's big blue landau passing over the bridge that crossed the harbour.

Gell would be with Bessie in her cell by this time. She was guilty. He must see that she was guilty. What a shock! What a disillusionment! All his high-built faith in the girl wrecked and broken!

At last he unrobed and went down the empty staircase. On opening the door to the court-yard he was startled to see Gell pacing to and fro with downcast head among the remains of some tombs of old kings which lay about in the rank grass.

"Ah, is it you?" said Gell, looking up at the sound of Stowell's footsteps. "You were good to her, old fellow. I can't help thanking you."

Stowell mumbled some reply and then said he thought Gell would have been with Bessie.

"I daren't go," said Gell. "But Fenella has gone instead of me."

"Fenella?"

Stowell felt as if something were creeping between his skin and his flesh. Fenella and Bessie--those two and the dread secret!

"My poor girl!" said Gell. "If she has anything to say--to confess--it won't hurt so much to say it to somebody else. But of course she hasn't--she can't have."

Stowell felt as if he had been suddenly deprived of the power of speech. Yes, Bessie would confess everything to Fenella. Not merely the birth of her child but also the name of her fellow-sinner--Fenella's desire to punish the guilty man would drag that out of her. Perhaps the confession was going on at that very moment. What a shock for Fenella too! All her high-built faith in him wrecked and broken!

"Well, let us hope...."

"Yes, that is all we can do."

And then the two men parted, Gell returning to his pacing among the tombs of the dead kings and Stowell going out by the Deemster's door.

A few of the spectators at the trial were waiting to see the Deemster off, but he scarcely saw their salutations and did not respond to them.