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Cornell University Library 
 PR 4404.M4 1921 
 
 The master of man; the story °'^,,^;"'„|?y 
 
 3 1924 013 452 747 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013452747 
 
AMERICAN AND BRITISH OPINIONS ON 
 HALL CAINE'S NOVELS 
 
 T. P. O'Connob: 
 
 " Hall Caine reaches heights attained only by the greatest masters of 
 fiction. He belongs to that small minority of the great elect of 
 literature." 
 
 Gladstone said: 
 
 " I cannot but regard with warm respect and admiration the conduct 
 of one who, holding the author's position as an admired and accepted 
 novelist, stakes himself on so bold a protestation on behalf of the things 
 which are unseen, as against those which are seen and are so terribly 
 effective in chaining us down to the level of our earthly existence." 
 
 Joseph Parker: 
 
 " The author prepares to bo great, really means to be great, and, in 
 my judgment, always succeeds in being great." 
 
 Sir Wm. Eobeetson Nicoll (British Weekly) : 
 
 "The author has respected, and that deeply, his message, his art, 
 and his readers." 
 
 Joseph Cowan (Newcastle Chronicle) : 
 
 " The novel is a great effort, splendid in emotion and vitality, a 
 noble inspiration carried to noble issues, an honour to Hall Caine and 
 to English fiction." 
 
 J. Cuming Walters (Manchester City News) : 
 
 " A great and impressive work, a work of might and a work of high 
 purpose." 
 
 Sir Walter Besant: 
 
 " A great book, great in conception and execution : a strong book, 
 strong in situation and character; and a human book, human in its 
 pathos, its terror and its passion." 
 
 " Hailed as a masterpiece, alike for its poetic beauty and realistic 
 grandeur." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 " It is not too much to say that it is the most powerful story that 
 has been written in the present generation. It is a work of genius." — 
 Scotsman. 
 
 "Hall Caine stands apart among his novelistic brethren, though re- 
 minding one somewhat of Victor Hugo." — The World. 
 
 " What seems so extraordinary to women is that the author should 
 so well understand the inner soul of their sex. A woman who Is most 
 competent to judge said: 'No man ever made such a revelation of a 
 woman's innermost sanctuary.' " — Philadelphia InqtUrer. 
 
FOREIGN OPINIONS ON HALL CAINE'S NOVELS 
 
 " We willingly agree that Hall Caine is a Utt4ra4eur of much talent. 
 . . . His writings have the grand rvin. . . . Under his simplicity of 
 language he hides the depths of the science of diction. ... It is cer- 
 tain that something of his work will remain." — ^Augtjste Glaedon, 
 Somomders Anglais Contemporains. 
 
 " Hall Caine as a true epic poet goes to the root of the matter. . . . 
 His ' Prodigal Son ' ranks far above other contemporary novels. In 
 depicting the inner life of his characters, Hall Caine touches depths 
 from which no reader can turn away without a sense of profound 
 emotion." — Professor W. B. Wildman in The Btmd. 
 
 " This book ranks among the greatest works of epic literature in the 
 unflinching march of its progressive action and its achievement of a 
 climax of real grandeur." — Breslauer Morgen Zeitung. 
 
 " Hall Caine impresses the essential truth and dignity of human 
 nature upon the minds of his readers^" — Deutsche Wwrte (Berlin). 
 
 " Hall Caine is a great and gifted writer. . . . His compelling, 
 thrilling, sympathetic language strikes from heart to heart." — Prager 
 Zeitung. 
 
The Master of Man 
 
The Novels of Hall Caine 
 
 THE SHADOW OF A CRIME 
 
 A SON OP HAGAR 
 
 THE DEEMSTER 
 
 THE BONDMAN 
 
 THE SCAPEGOAT 
 
 THE MANXMAN 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 THE ETERNAL CITY 
 
 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 THE PRODIGAL SON 
 
 THE WOMAN THOU GAVEST ME 
 
 THE MASTER OP MAN 
 
The Master of Man 
 
 The Story of a Sin 
 
 By 
 
 Hall Caine 
 
 "Be sure your sin will find you out" 
 
 Philadelphia & London 
 J. B. Lippincott Company 
 
 1921 
 
 0-' 
 
The Master of Man 
 
 is published also in 
 
 ENGLAND 
 
 CANADA 
 
 AUSTRALIA 
 
 FRANCE 
 
 DENMARK 
 
 HOLLAND 
 
 SWEDEN 
 
 FINLAND 
 
 V^So'Sa^^ 
 
 Copyright, 1920, 19 21, by sir hall caine, k. b. e. 
 
 ElectrotyPed and Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company 
 The Washington Square Press, Philadelphia, U. S. A. 
 
THE BIN 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FIRST BOOK 
 
 SECOND BOOK 
 
 THE RECKONING 
 
 100 
 
 THIRD BOOK 
 
 THE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 172 
 
 THE RETRIBUTION 
 
 FOURTH BOOK 
 
 239 
 
 FIFTH BOOK 
 
 THE REPARATION 
 
 299 
 
 SIXTH BOOK 
 
 THE REDEMPTION 
 
 362 
 
 SEVENTH BOOK 
 
 THE HEStTREBCTION 
 
 403 
 
 CONCLIJBION 
 
 - 429 
 
AUTHOR'S NOTE 
 
 I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to conversations, many years 
 ago, with the late Earl Emil Francos for important incidents in Chapter 
 Forty-Four, which, founded on fact, were in part incorporated hy the 
 jRusso-Jewish writer in his noile book, " The Chief Justice." 
 
 Also I unsh to say that Tolstoy told me, through his dOAighter, that 
 similar incidents occurring in Russia (although he altered them ma- 
 terially) had suggested the theme of his great novel, "Resurrection." 
 
 For as much knowledge as I may have heen able to acquire of Ma/nx 
 law and legal procedure, I am indebted to Mr. Ramsey B. Moore, the 
 Attorney-General in the Isle of Man, the scene of my story. 
 
 H. C. 
 
 Greeba Castle, 
 Isle of Ma/n. 
 
The Master of Man 
 
 FIRST BOOK 
 
 THE SIN 
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 THE BREED OF THE BALLAMOAR 
 
 We were in full school after breakfast, when the Principal 
 came from his private room with his high, quick, birdlike step and 
 almost leapt up to his desk to speak to us. He was a rather small, 
 slight man, of middle age, with pale face and nervous gestures, 
 liable to alternate bouts of a somewhat ineffectual playfulness and 
 gusts of ungovernable temper. It was easy to see that he was in 
 his angry mood that morning. He looked round the school for a 
 moment over the silver rims of his spectacles, and then said, 
 
 " Boys, before you go to your classes for the day I have some- 
 thing to tell you. One of you has brought disgrace upon King 
 William's, and I must know which of you it is." 
 
 Then followed the " degrading story." The facts of it had 
 just been brought to his notice by the Inspector of Police for 
 Castletown. He had no intention of entering into details. They 
 were too shameful. Briefly, one of our boys, a senior boy appar- 
 ently, had lately made a practice of escaping from his house after 
 hours, and had so far forfeited his self-respect as to go walking in 
 the dark roads with a young girl — a servant girl, he was ashamed 
 to say, from the home of the High Bailiff. He had been seen re- 
 peatedly, and although not identified, he had been recognised i*Bf 
 his cap as belonging to the College. Last night two yoiuig towns- 
 men had set out to waylay him. There had been a fight, in which 
 our boy had apparently used a weapon, probably a stick. The 
 result was that one of the young townsmen was now in hospital, still 
 insensible, the other was seriously injured about the face. Prob- 
 ably a pair of young blackguards who had intervened from base 
 motives of their own and therefore deserved no pity. But none the 
 less the conduct of the King William's boy had been disgraceful. 
 It must be punished, no matter who he was, or how high he might 
 stand in the school. 
 
 1 
 
2 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " I tell you plainly, boys, I don't know who he is. Neither do 
 the police — the townsmen never having heard his name and the 
 girl refusing to speak." 
 
 But he had a suspicion — a very strong suspicion, based upon an 
 unmistakable fact. He might have called the boy he suspected 
 to his room and dealt with him privately. But a matter like this, 
 known to the public authorities and affecting the honour and wel- 
 fare of the college, was not to be hushed up. In fact the police 
 had made it a condition of their foregoing proceedings in the 
 Courts that an open inquiry should be made here. He had under- 
 taken to make it, and he must make it now. 
 
 " Therefore, I give the boy who has been guilty of this degrad- 
 ing conduct the opportunity of voluntary confession — of revealing 
 himself to the whole school, and asldng pardon of his Principal, his 
 masters and his fellow-pupils for tlie disgrace he has brought on 
 them. Who is it.? " 
 
 None of us stirred, spoke or made sign. The Principal was 
 rapidly losing his temper. 
 
 " Boys," he said, " there is something I have not told you. 
 According to the police the disgraceful incident occurred between 
 nine and nine-thirty last night, and it is known to the house-master 
 of one of your houses that one boy, and one only, who had been out 
 without permission, came in after that hour. I now give that boy 
 another chance. Who is he? " 
 
 Still no one spoke or stirred. The Principal bit his lip, and 
 again looked down the line of our desks over the upper rims of 
 his spectacles. 
 
 " Does nobody speak.'' Must I call a name? Is it possible 
 that any King William's boy can ask for the double shame of being 
 guilty and being found out? " 
 
 Even yet there was no sign from the boys, and no sound except 
 their audible breathing through the nose. 
 
 " Very well. So be it. I've given that boy his chance. Now^ 
 he must take the consequences." 
 
 With that the Principal stepped down from his desk, turned his 
 blazing eyes towards the desks of the fifth form and said, 
 
 " Stowell, step forward." 
 
 We gasped. Stowell was the head boy of the school and an 
 immense and imiversal favourite. Through the mists of years 
 some of us can see him still, as he heaved up from his seat that 
 morning and walked slowly across the open floor in front to where 
 the Principal was standing. A big, well-grown boy, narrowly 
 bordering on eigihteen, dark-haired, with broad forehead, large 
 dark eyes, fine features, and, even in those boyish days, a singular 
 
THE BREED OF TEE BALLAMOAR 3 
 
 air of distinction. There was no surprise in his face, and not a 
 particle of shame, but there was a look of defiance which raised to 
 boiling point the Principal's simmering anger. 
 
 " Stowell," he said, " you will not deny that you were out after 
 hours last night .'' " 
 
 " No, Sir." 
 
 " Then it was you who were guilty of this disgraceful conduct?" 
 
 Stowell seemed to be about to speak, and then with a proud 
 look to check himself, and to close his mouth as with a snap. 
 
 " It was you, wasn't it? " 
 
 Stowell straightened himself up and answered, " So you 
 say. Sir." 
 
 " I say ? Speak for yourself. You've a tongue in your head, 
 haven't you ? " 
 
 " Perhaps I have. Sir." 
 
 " Then it was you? " 
 
 Stowell made no answer. 
 
 " Why don't you answer me? Answer, Sir ! It rvas you," said 
 the Principal. 
 
 And then Stowell, with a little toss of the head and a slight 
 curl of the lip, replied, 
 
 " If you say it was, what is the use of my saying anything. Sir ? 
 
 The last remnant of the Principal's patience left him. His 
 eyes flamed and his nostrils quivered. A cane, seldom used, was 
 lying along the ledge of his desk. He turned to it, snatched it up, 
 and brought it down in two or three rapid sweeps on StoweU's 
 back, and (as afterwards appeared) his bare neck also. 
 
 It was all over in a flash. We gasped again. There was a mo- 
 ment of breathless silence. All eyes were on Stowell. He was face 
 to face with the Principal, standing, in his larger proportions, a 
 good two inches above him, ghastly white and trembling with pas- 
 sion. For a moment we thiought anything might happen. Then 
 Stowell appeared to recover his self-control. He made another 
 little toss of the head, another curl of the lip and a shrug of 
 the shoulders. 
 
 " Now go back to your study. Sir," said the Principal, between 
 gusts of breath, " and stay there until you are told to leave it." 
 
 Stowell was in no hurry, but he turned after a moment and 
 walked out, with a strong step, almost a haughty one. 
 
 " Boys, go to your classes," said the Principal, in a hoarse voice, 
 and then he went out, too, but more hurriedly. 
 
 Something had gone wrong, wretchedly wrong, we scarcely 
 knew what — that was our confused impression as we trooped off to 
 the class-rooms, a dejected lot of lads, half furious, half afraid. 
 
THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 II 
 
 At seven o'clock that night Stowell was still confined to his 
 study, a little, bare room, containing an iron bedstead, a deal wash- 
 stand, a table, one chair, a trunk, some books on a hanging book- 
 shelf, and a small rug before an iron fender. It was November and 
 the day had been cold. Jamieson (the Principal's valet) had smug- 
 gled up some coal and lit a little fire for him. Mrs. Gale (the Prin- 
 cipal's housekeeper), bringing his curtailed luncheon, had seen the 
 long red wheal which the cane had left across the back of his neck, 
 and insisted on cooling it with some lotion and bandaging it with 
 linen. He was sitting alone in the half-darkness of his little room, 
 crouching over the fire, gloomy, morose, fierce and with a burning 
 sense of outraged justice. The door opened and another boy came 
 into the room. It was Alick Gell, his special chum, a lad of his 
 own age, but fair-haired, blue-eyed, and with rather feminine 
 features. In a thick voice that was like a sob half -choked in his 
 throat, he said, 
 
 " Vic, I can't stand this any longer." 
 
 "Oh, it's you, is it? I thought you'd come." 
 
 " Of course you didn't do that disgraceful thing, as they call 
 it, but you've got to know who did. It was I." 
 
 Stowell did not answer. He had neither turned nor looked 
 up, and Grell, standing behind him, tugged at his shoulders and 
 said again, 
 
 " Don't you hear me? It was I." 
 
 " I know." 
 
 "You know? How do you know ? When did you know ? Did 
 you know this morning? " 
 
 " I knew last night." 
 
 Going into town he had seen Gell on the opposite side of the 
 road. Yes, it was true enough he was out after hours. The Prin- 
 cipal himself had sent him ! Early in the day he had told him that 
 after " prep " he was to go to the station for something. 
 
 " Good Lord ! Then he must have forgotten all about it ! " 
 
 " He had no business to forget." 
 
 "Why didn't you tell him?" 
 
 " Not I — not likely ! " 
 
 " But being out after hours wasn't anything. It wasn't knock- 
 ing those blackguards about. Why didn't you deny that anyway ? " 
 
 " Oh, shut up, Alick." 
 
 Again Gell tugged at his shoulders and said, 
 
 "But why didn't you?" 
 
THE BREED OF THE BALLAMOAB 5 
 
 " If you must know, I'll tell you — because they would have had 
 you for it next." 
 
 Mrs. Gale had found the big window of the lavatory open at a 
 quarter-past nine, and when she sent Jamieson down he saw 
 Gell closing it. 
 
 " Do you mean that. . . . that to save me, you allowed your- 
 self to. . . . " 
 
 " Shut up, I tell you ! " 
 
 There was silence for a moment and then Gell began to cry 
 openly, and to pour out a torrent of self-reproaches. He iwas a 
 coward; a wretched, miserable, contemptible coward — ^that's what 
 he was and he had always known it. He would never forgive 
 himself — ^never ! But perhaps he had not been thinking of saving 
 his own skin only. 
 
 " That was little Bessie CoUister." 
 
 " I know." 
 
 If he had stood up to the confounded thing and confessed, and 
 given her away, after she had been plucky and refused to speak, 
 and his father had heard of it. . . . her father also. . . . her 
 stepfather. . . . 
 
 " Dan Bald'romma, you know what he is, Vic ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, there would have been the devil to pay all round," 
 
 "Wouldn't there?" 
 
 " The College, too ! Dan would have had something to say to 
 old Peacock (nickname for the Principal) on that subject also." 
 
 Yes, that was what Gell had thought, and it was the reason (one 
 of the reasons) why he had stood silent when the Principal chal- 
 lenged them. Nobody knew anything except the girl. The Police 
 didn't know; the Principal didn't know. If he kept quiet the 
 inquiry would end in nothing and there would be no harm done to 
 anybody — except the town ruffians, and they deserved all they got. 
 How was he to guess that somebody else was out after hours, and 
 that to save him from being exposed, perhaps expelled, his own 
 chum, like the brick he was and always had been. . . . 
 
 " Hold your tongue, you fool ! " 
 
 Gell made for the doot. " Look here," he said, " I'm going 
 to tell the Principal that if you were out last night it was on an 
 errand for him — ^that can't hurt anybody." 
 
 " No, you're not." 
 
 " Yes, I am — certainly I am." 
 
 " If you do, I'll never speak to you again — on my soul, never." 
 
 " But he's certain to remember it sooner or later." 
 
 " Let him." 
 
6 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " And ■w'heii he does, what's he to think of himself ? " 
 " That's his affair, isn't it? Leave him alone." 
 Gell's voice rose to a cry. " No, I will not leave him alone. 
 And since you won't let me say that about you, I'll tell him about 
 myself. Yes, I will, and nobody shall prevent me ! I don't care 
 what happens about father, or anybody else, now. I can't stand 
 this any longer. I can't and I won't." 
 
 "Alick! AlickGeU! Old fellow. ..." 
 
 But the door had been slammed to and Gell was gone. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Principal was in his Library, a well-carpeted noom, 
 warmed by a large fire and lighted by a red-shaded lamp. His 
 half-yearly examination had just finished and his desk was piled 
 high with examination papers, but he could not settle himself to his 
 work on them. He was harking back to the event of the morning, 
 and was not too pleased with himself. He had lost his temper 
 again; he had inflicted a degrading punishment on a senior boy, 
 and to protect the good name of the school he had allowed himself 
 to be intimidated by the police into a foolish and ineffectual 
 public inquiry. 
 
 "Wretched! Wretched! Wretched!" he thought, rising for 
 the twentieth time from his chair before the fire and pacing the 
 room in a disorder. 
 
 He thought of Stowell with a riot of mingled anger and affec- 
 tion. He had always liked that boy — a fine lad, with good heart 
 and brain in spite of obvious limitations. He had shown the boy 
 some indulgence, too, and this was how he had repaid him ! Defy- 
 ing him in the face of the whole school ! Provoking him with his 
 prevarication, the proud curl of his lip and his damnable iteration : 
 " If you say so. Sir. . . ." It had been maddening. Any master 
 in the world might have lost his temper. 
 
 Of course the boy was guilty! But then he was no sneak or 
 coward. Good gracious, no, that was the last thing anybody would 
 say about him. Quite the contrary! Only too apt to take the 
 blame of bad things on himself when he might make others equally 
 responsible. That was one reason the under-masters liked him 
 and the boys worshipped him. Then why, in the name of good- 
 ness, hadn't he spoken out, made some defence, given some ex- 
 planation ? After all the first offence was nothing worse than being 
 out after hours for a little foolish sweethearting. The Principal 
 saiw Stowell making a clean breast of everything, and himself 
 administering a severe admonition and then fighting it all out with 
 
THE BREED OF THE BALLAMOAB 7 
 
 the police for school and scholar. But that was impossible now — 
 quite impossible ! 
 
 "Wretched! Wretched! Wretched!" 
 
 He thought of the boy's father — the senior judge or Deemster 
 of the island, and easily the first man in it. One of the trustees of 
 the college also, to whom serious matters were always mentioned. 
 This had become a serious matter. Even if nothing worse hap- 
 pened to that young blackguard in the hospital the police might 
 insist on expulsion. If so, what would be the absolute evidence 
 against the boy ? Only that he had been out of school when the 
 disgraceful incident had happened ! The Deemster, who was cool 
 and clear-headed, might say the boy could have been out on soxxxe. 
 other errand. Or perhaps that some other boy might have been 
 out at the same time. 
 
 But that couldn't be ! Good heavens, no ! Stowell wasn't a 
 fool. If he had been innocent, why on earth should he have taken 
 his degrading punishment lying down ? No, no, he had been guilty 
 enough. He had admitted that he was out after hours, and, having 
 nothing else to say even about that (why or by whose permission), 
 he had tried to carry the whole thing ofF with a sort of silent 
 braggadocio. 
 
 " Wretched ! Wretched ! Wretched ! " 
 
 The Principal had at length settled himself at his desk, and 
 was taking up some of the examination papers, when he uncovered 
 a small white packet. Obviously a chemist's packet, sealed with 
 red wax and tied with blue string. Not having seen it before he 
 picked it up, and looked at it. It was addressed to himself, and 
 was marked " By Passenger Train — ^to be called for." 
 
 The Principal felt his thin hair rising from his scalp. Some- 
 thing he had forgotten had come back upon him with the force and 
 suddenness of a blow. Off and on for a week he had suffered from 
 nervous headaches. Somebody had recommended an American 
 patent medicine and he had written to Douglas for it. The 
 Douglas chemist had replied that it was coming by the afternoon 
 steamer, and he would send it on to Castletown by the last train. 
 The letter had arrived when he was in class, and Jamieson the 
 valet, being out of reach, he had asked Stowell, who was at hand, 
 to go to the Station for the parcel after preparation and leave it 
 on his Library table. And then the headache had passed off, and in 
 the pressure of the examination he had forgotten the whole matter ! 
 
 The Principal got up again. His limbs felt rigid, and he had 
 the sickening sensation of his body shrinking into insignificance. 
 At that moment there came a knocking at his door. He could not 
 answer at first and the knocking was repeated. 
 
8 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Come in then," he said, and Gell entered, his face flooded 
 with tears. 
 
 He knew the boy as one who was nearly always in trouble, and 
 his first impulse was to drive him out. 
 
 " Why do you come here.'' Go to your house-master, or to 
 your head, or . . . ." 
 
 " It's about Stowell himself. Sir. He's innocent," said Gel/. 
 
 " Innocent .'' " 
 
 " Yes, Sir — it was I," said Gell. And then came a flood of 
 words, blurted out like water from an inverted bottle. It was true 
 that he was with the girl last night, but it was a lie that he had 
 made a practice of walking out with her. She came from the north 
 of the island, a farm near his home, and he hadn't known she was 
 living in Castletown until he met her in the toMm yesterday after- 
 noon. They were on the Darby Haven Road, just beyond the col- 
 lege cricket ground, about nine o'clock, when the blackguards 
 dropped out on them from the Hango Hill ruins and started to 
 rag him. It was true he smashed them and he would do it again, 
 and worse next time, but it was another lie that he had done it with 
 a stick. They had the stick, and it was just when he was knocking 
 out one of them that the other aimed a blow at him which fell on his 
 chum instead and tumbled him over insensible. The girl had gone 
 off screaming before that, and seeing the police coming up he had 
 leapt into the cricket ground and got back into school by the 
 lavatory window. 
 
 " But why, boy .... why .... why didn't you say all this 
 in school this morning.'' " 
 
 " I was afraid. Sir," said Gell, and then came the explanation 
 he had given to Stowell. He had been afraid his father would 
 get to know, and the girl's father, too — ^that was to say her step- 
 father. Her step-father was a tenant of his own father's ; they 
 were always at cross purposes, and he had thought if the girl got 
 into any trouble at the High Bailiff's and it came out that he had 
 been the cause of it, her step-father .... 
 
 " Who is he ? What's his name ? " 
 
 " Dan CoUister — but they call him Baldromma after the 
 farm. Sir." 
 
 " That wind-bag and agitator who is always in the news- 
 papers .'' " 
 
 " Yes, Sir." 
 
 " But, good heavens, boy, don't you see what you've done for 
 me? — allowed me to punish an innocent person? " 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Gell, and then, through another gust of 
 sobs, came further explanations. It had all been over before he 
 
TEE BOYHOOD OF VICTOR STOWELL 9 
 
 had had time to think. The Principal had said that nobody knew, 
 and he had thought he had only to hold his tongue and nothing 
 would be found out. But if he had known that Stowell knew, and 
 that he had been out himself .... 
 
 "And did he know?" 
 
 " Yes, Sir. He saw me with Bessie CoUister as he was going 
 to the station and he thought he couldn't get out of this himself 
 without letting me in for it." 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me that he took that punishment to ... . 
 to save you from being discovered? " 
 
 Gell hesitated for a moment, then choked down his sobs, and 
 said with a defiant cry: 
 
 " Yes, he did — ^to save me, and the school, and .... and you, 
 too. Sir." 
 
 The Principal staggered back a step, and then said: " Leave 
 me, boy, leave me." 
 
 He did not go to bed that night, or to school next day, or the 
 day after, or the day after that. On the fourth day he wrote a 
 long letter to the Deemster, telling him with absolute truthfulness 
 what had happened, and concluding: 
 
 " That is all, your Honour, but to me it is everything. I have 
 not only punished an innocent boy, but one who, in taking his pun- 
 ishment, was doing an act of divine unselfishness. I am humili- 
 ated in my own eyes. I feel like a little man in the presence of 
 your son. I can never look into his face again. 
 
 " My first impulse was to resign my post, but on second 
 thoughts I have determined to leave the issue to your decision. If 
 I am to remain as head of your school you must take your boy 
 away. If he is to stay I must go. Which is it to be? " 
 
 CHAPTER TWO 
 
 THS BOYHOOD OF VICTOR STOWBLL 
 
 ■ Deemster Stowell was the only surviving member of an old 
 Manx family. They had lived for years beyond memory at 
 Ballamoar (the Great Place) an estate of nearly a thousand acres 
 on the seaward angle of the Curragh lands which lie along the 
 north-west of the island. The fishermen say the great gulf-stream 
 which sweeps across the Atlantic strikes the Manx coast at that 
 elbow. Hence the tropical plants which grow in the open at 
 Ballamoar, and also the clouds of snow-white mist which too often 
 hang over it, 'hiding the house, and the lands around, and making 
 
10 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 the tower of Jurby Church on the edge of the cliff look like a 
 lighthouse far out at sea. 
 
 The mansion house, in the Deemster's day, was a ramshackle old 
 place which bore signs of having been altered and added to by 
 many generations of his family. It stood back to the sea and fac- 
 ing a broad and undulating lawn, which was bordered by lofty elms 
 that were inhabited by undisturbed colonies of rooks. From a 
 terrace behind, opening out of the dining-room, there was a far 
 view on clear days of the Mull of Galloway to the north, and of the 
 Morne Mountains to the west. People used to say — 
 
 " The Stowells have caught a smatch of the Irish and the 
 Scotch in their Manx blood." 
 
 The Deemster was sixty years of age at that time. A large, 
 spare man with an almost Jovian white head, clean-shaven face, 
 powerful yet melancholy eyes, bold yet sensitive features and long 
 yet delicate hands — a strong, silent, dignified, rather solemn 
 personality. 
 
 He was a man of the highest integrity. Occupying an ofBce 
 too often associated, in his time, with various forms of corruption, 
 the breath of scandal never touched him. He was a legislator, as 
 well as a Judge, being ex officio a member of the little Manx Parlia- 
 ment, but in his double capacity (so liable to abuse) nobody with 
 a doubtful scheme would have dared to approach him. 
 
 " What does the old Deemster say ? " — the answer to that 
 question often settled a dispute, for nobody thought of appealing 
 against his judgment. 
 
 " Justice is the strongest and most sacred thing on earth " — 
 that was his motto, and he lived up to it. 
 
 His private life had been saddened by a great sorrow. He 
 married, rather late in life, a young Englishwoman, out of Cumber- 
 land — a gentle creature with a kind of moonlight beauty. She died 
 four or five years afterwards and the Manx people knew little 
 about her. To the last they called her the " Stranger." 
 
 The Deemster bore his loss in characteristic silence. Nobody 
 intruded on his sorrow, or even entered his house, but on the day 
 of the funeral half " the north " lined the long grass-grown road 
 from the back gates of Ballamoar to the little wind-swept church- 
 yard over against the sea. He thanked none of them and saluted 
 none, but his head was low as his coach peissed through. 
 
 Next day he took his Court as usual, and from that day onward 
 nobody saw any difference in him. But long afterwards, Janet 
 Curphey, the lady housekeeper at Ballamoar, was heard to say in 
 the village post-office, which was also the grocer's shop, that every 
 morning after breakfast the Deemster had put a vase of fresh-cut 
 
TBS BOYBOOD OF VICTOR 8T0WELL 11 
 
 flowers on the writing-desk in his library under his young wife's 
 portrait, until it was now a white-haired man who was making 
 his daily offering to the picture of a young woman. 
 
 " Aw, yes, Mrs. Clucas, yes ! And what did it matter to the 
 woman to be a stranger when she was loved like that ? " 
 
 The " Stranger " had left a child, and this had been at once the 
 tragedy and the triumph of her existence. Although an ancient 
 family of exceptional longevity the Stowells had carried on their 
 race by a very thin line. One child, rarely two, never three, and 
 only one son at any time — ^that had been all that had stood from 
 generation to generation between the family name and extinction. 
 After three years of childlessness the Deemster's wife had realised 
 the peril, and, for her husband's sake, begun to pray for a son. 
 With all her soul she prayed for him. The fervour of her prayers 
 made her a devoutly religious woman. When her hope looked like 
 a certainty her joy was that of an angel rejoicing in the goodness 
 and greatness and glory of God. But by that time the sword had 
 almost worn out its scabbard. She had fought a great fight and 
 under the fire of her spirit her body had begun to fail. 
 
 The Deemster had sent for famous physicians and some of 
 them had shaken their heads. 
 
 " She may get through it; but we must take care, your Honour, 
 we must take care." 
 
 Beneath his calm exterior the Deemster had been torn by the 
 red strife of conflicting hopes, but his wife had only had one desire. 
 When her dread hour came she met it with a shining face. Her son 
 was born and he was to live, but she was dying. At the last mo- 
 ment she asked for her husband, and drew his head down to her. 
 
 " Call him Victor," she said — she had conquered. 
 
 II 
 
 It was then that the lady housekeeper took service at Balla- 
 moar. Janet Curphey was the last relic of a decayed Manx family 
 that had fallen on evil times, and having lost all she had come for 
 life. She quickly developed an almost slave-like devotion to the 
 Deemster (during her first twenty years she would never allow 
 anybody else to wait on him at table) as well as a motherly love for 
 his motherless little one. The child called her his mother, nobody 
 corrected him, and for years he knew nothing to the contrary. 
 
 He grew to be a braw and bright little man, and was idolized by 
 everybody. Having no relations of his own, except " mother," and 
 the Deemster, he annexed everybody else's. Bobbie, the young son 
 of the Ballamoar farmer (there was a farm between the mansion- 
 
12 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 house and the sea) called his father " Dad," so Robbie Creer was 
 " Dad " to Victor too. The old widow in the village who kept the 
 post-office-grocer's shop was " Auntie Kitty " to her orphan niece, 
 Alice, so she was " Auntie Kitty " to Victor also. 
 
 " Everybody loves that child," said Janet. It was true. As 
 far back as that, under God knows what guidance, he was laying 
 his anchor deep for the days of storm and tempest. 
 
 During his earlier years he saw little of his father, but every 
 evening after his bath he was taken into the Library to bid Good- 
 night to him, and then the Deemster would lift him up to the pic- 
 ture to bid Good-night to his mother also. 
 
 " You must Ipve and worship her all your life, darling. I'll 
 tell you why, some day." 
 
 He was a born gipsy, often being lost in the broad plantations 
 about the house, and then turning up with astonishing stories of 
 the distances he had travelled. 
 
 " I didn't went no farther nor Ramsey to-day, mother " — seven 
 miles as the crow flies. 
 
 He was bom a poet too, and after the Deemster had made a 
 " Limerick " on his Christian name, he learnt to rhyme to the same 
 measure, making quatrains almost as rapidly as he could speak, 
 though often with strange words of his own compounding. Thus 
 he celebrated his pet lamb, his kid, his rabbits, the rooks on the 
 lawn, and particularly a naughty young pony his father had given 
 him, who " lived in the fiel' " and whom he " wanted to go to Peel," 
 but whenever he went out to fetch her she " always kicked up her 
 heel." Janet thought this marvellous, miraculous. It was a gift ! 
 The little prophet Samuel might have been more saintly but he 
 couldn't have been more wonderful. 
 
 Janet was not the only one to be impressed. It is known now 
 that day by day the Deemster copied the boy's rhymes, with much 
 similar matter, into a leather-boimd book which he had labelled 
 strangely enough, " Isabel's Diary." He kept this secret volume 
 under lock and key, and' it was never seen by anyone else until 
 years afterwards, when, in a tragic hour, the cldldish jingles in the 
 Judge's sober handwriting, under the eyes that looked at them, . 
 burnt like flame and cut like a knife. 
 
 It was remarked by Janet that the Deemster's aiFection for the 
 child grew greater, while the expression of it became less as the 
 years went on. " Is the boy up yet? " would be the firbt word he 
 would say when she took his early tea to him in the morning • and 
 if a long day in the Courts kept him from home until after the 
 child had been put to bed, he would never sit down until he had 
 gone upstairs to look at the little one in his cot. 
 
TBE BOYMO0B 0jf YIOTOB STOWSLL 13 
 
 In common with other imaginative children brought up alone 
 the boy invented a playmate,, but contrary to custom his invisible 
 comrade was of the opposite sex, not that of the little dreamer. He 
 called her " Sadie," nobody knew why, or how he had come by the 
 name, for it was quite unknown in the island. " Sadie " lived with 
 her mother, " Mrs. Corlett," in the lodge of Ballamoar, which had 
 been empty and shut up since " the Stranger " died, when the 
 coachman, who had occupied it, was no longer needed. On return- 
 ing from some of his runaway jaunts the boy accoimted for his 
 absence by saying he had been down to the gate to see " Sadie." 
 He filled the empty house with an entire scheme of domestic econ- 
 omy, and could tell you all that happened there. 
 
 " Sadie was peeling the potatoes this morning and Mrs. Corlett 
 was washing up, mamma." 
 
 His pony's name was Molly and by six years of age he had 
 learnt to ride her with such ease and confidence that to see them 
 cantering up the drive was to think that boy and pony must be a 
 single creature. Molly developed a foal, called' Derry, which 
 always wanted to be trotting after its mother. That suited the boy 
 perfectly. Derry had to carry " Sadie " — a rare device which 
 enabled his invisible comrade to be nearly always with him. 
 
 But at length came a dire event which destroyed " Sadie." The 
 master of Ballamoar was rising seven when a distant relative of the 
 Derby family (formerly the Lords of Man) was appointed Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor of the island. This was Sir John Stanley, an 
 ex- Indian officer — a man in middle life, not brilliant, but the incar- 
 nation of commonsense, essentially a product of his time, firm of 
 will, conservative in opinions, impatient of all forms of romantic 
 sentiment, but kindly, genial and capable of constant friendship. 
 
 The Deemster and the new Governor, though their qualities had 
 points of difi'erence, became good friends instantly. They met 
 first at the swearing-in at Castle Rushen where, as senior Judge 
 of the island, the Deemster administered the oath. But their 
 friendship was sealed by an experience in common — the Governor 
 having also lost a beloved wife, who had died in childbirth, leaving 
 him with an only child. This was a girl called Fenella, a year and 
 a half younger than Victor, a beautiful little fairy, but a little 
 woman, too, with a will of her own also. 
 
 The children came together at Ballamoar, the Governor having 
 brought his little daughter, with her French governess, on his first 
 call. There was the usual ceremonious meeting of the little people, 
 the usual eyeing of each other from afar, the usual shy aloofness. 
 Then came swift comradeship, gurgling laughter, a frantic romp- 
 ing round the rooms, and out on to the lawn, and then — a wild 
 
14 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 quarrel, with shrill voices in fierce dispute. The two fathers rose 
 from their seats in the Library and looked out of the windows. 
 The girl was running towards the house with screams of terror, 
 and the boy was stoning her off the premises. 
 
 " You mustn't think as this is your house, 'cause it isn't." 
 Janet made peace between them, and the children kissed at 
 pjirting, but going home in the carriage Fenella confided to the 
 French governess her fixed resolve to " marry to a girl," not a boy, 
 when her time came to take a husband. 
 
 The effect on Victor was of another kind but no less serious. It 
 was remarked that the visit of little Fenella Stanley had in some 
 mysterious way banished his invisible playmate. Sadie was dead 
 — stone dead and buried. No more was ever heard of her, and 
 Mrs. Corlett's cottage returned to its former condition as a closed- 
 up gate-lodge. When Derry trotted by Molly's side there was 
 apparently somebody else astride of her now. But — strange whis- 
 pering of sex — whoever she was the boy never helped her to mount, 
 and when she dismounted he always looked another way. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Four years passed, and boy and girl met again. This time it 
 was at Government House and the boot was on the other leg. 
 Fenella, a tall girl for her age, well-grown, spirited, a little spoiled, 
 was playing tennis with the three young Gell girls— daughters of a 
 Manx family of some pretensions. When Victor, in his straw hat 
 and Eton j acket, appeared in the tennis court (having driven over 
 with his father and been sent out to the girls by the Governor) the 
 French governess told Fenella to let him join in the game. She did 
 so, taking a racquet from one of the Gell girls and giving it to the 
 boy. But though Victor, who was now at the Ramsey Grammar 
 School, could play cricket and football with any boy of his age on 
 the island, he knew nothing about tennis, and again and again, in 
 spite of repeated protests, sent the balls flying out of the court. 
 
 The Gells tittered and sniffed, and at length Fenella, calling 
 him a booby, snatched the racquet out of his hand and gave it back 
 to the girl. At this humiliation his eyes flashed and his cl^eeks 
 coloured, and after a moment he marched moodily back to the open 
 window of the drawing-room. There the Governor and the 
 Deemster were sitting, and the Governor said, 
 
 " Helloa ! What's amiss ? Why aren't you playing with 
 the girls.''" 
 
 " Because I'm not," said the boy. 
 
THE BOYHOOD OF VICTOR STOWELL 15 
 
 " Victor ! " said the Deemster, but the boy's eyes had began to 
 fill, so the matter ended. 
 
 There was a show of peace when the girls came in to tea, but on 
 returning to Ballamoar the boy communicated to Janet in " open 
 Court " his settled conviction that " girls were no good anyway." 
 
 Boy and girl did not meet again for yet another four years and 
 then the boot had changed its leg once more. By that time Victor 
 had made his boy-friendship. It was with Alick Gell, brother of 
 the three Gell girls and only son of Archibald Gell, a big man in 
 Manxland, Speaker of the House of Keys, the representative 
 branch of the little Manx Parliament. Archibald Gell's lands, 
 which were considerable, made boundary with the Deemster's, and 
 his mansion house was the next on the Ramsey Eoad, but his prin- 
 cipal activities were those of a speculative builder. In this capa- 
 city he had put up vast numbers of boarding-houses aU over the 
 island to meet the needs of the visiting industry, borrowing from 
 English Insurance Companies enormous sums on mortgage, 
 which could only be repaid by the thrift and forethought of a 
 second generation. 
 
 Alick knew what was expected of him, but down to date he had 
 shown no promise of capacity to fulfil his destiny. He had less of 
 his father's fiery energy than of the comfortable contentment of his 
 mother, who came of a line of Manx parsons, always shockingly 
 ill-paid, generally thriftless and sometimes threadbare. Yet he 
 was a lovable boy, not too bright of brain but with a heart of gold 
 and a genuine gift of friendship. 
 
 At the Ramsey Grammar School he had attached himself to 
 Victor, fetching and carrying for him, and looking up to him with 
 worshipful devotion. Now they were together at King William's 
 CoUege, the public school of the island, fine lads both, but neither 
 of them doing much good there. 
 
 It was the morning of the annual prize day at the end of the 
 summer term. The Governor had come to present the prizes, and 
 he was surrounded by all the officials of Man, except the Deemster, 
 who rarely attended such functions. The boys were on platforms 
 on either side of the hall, and the parents were in the body of it, 
 with the wives and sisters of the big people in the front row, and 
 Fenella, the Governor's daughter, now a tall girl in white, with her 
 French governess, in the midst of them. 
 
 At this ceremony Gell played no part, and even StoweU did not 
 shine. One boy after another went down to a tumult of hand- 
 clapping and climbed back with books piled up to his chin. When 
 Stowell's turn came, the Principal, who had been calling out the 
 
16 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 names of the prize-winners, and making little speeches in their 
 praise, tried to improve the occasion with a moral homily. 
 
 "Now here," he said, making one of his bird-like steps forward, 
 " is a boy of extraordinary talents — quite extraordinary. Yet he 
 has only one prize to receive. Why.? Want of application! If 
 boys of such great natural gifts .... yes, I might almost say 
 genius, would only apply themselves, there is nothing whatever, at 
 school or in after life. . . ." 
 
 P'shew! During this astonishing speech Stowell was already 
 on the platform, only a pace back from the Principal, in full view 
 of everybody, with face aflame and a burning sense of injustice. 
 And, although, when the interlude was over, and he stepped for- 
 ward to receive his Horace (he had won the prize for Classics) the 
 Governor rose and shook hands with him and said he was sure the 
 son of his old friend, the Deemster, would justify himself yet, and 
 make his father proud of him, he was perfectly certain that Fenella 
 Stanley's eyes were on him and S'he was thinking him a " booby." 
 But his revenge came later. In the afternoon he captained in 
 the cricket match, with fifteen of the junior house against the school 
 eleven. Things went badly for the big fellows from the moment 
 he took his place at the wicket, so they put on their best and fastest 
 bowlers. But he scored all round the wicket for nearly an hour, 
 driving the ball three times over the roof of the school chapel and 
 twice into the ruins beyond the Darby-Haven road, and carrying 
 his bat for more than sixty runs. Then, as he came in, the little 
 fellows who had been frantic, and Gell, who had been turning cart- 
 wheels in delirious excitement, and the big fellows, who had been 
 beaten, stood up together and cheered him lustily. 
 
 But at that moment he wasn't thinking about any of them. He 
 knew — although, of course, he did not look — that in the middle of 
 the people in the pavilion, who were all on their feet and waving 
 their handkerchiefs, there was Fenella Stanley, with glistening 
 eyes and cheeks aglow. Perhaps she thought he would salute her 
 now, or even stop and speak. But no, not likely ! He doiFed his 
 cap to the Governor as he ran past, but took no more notice of the 
 Governor's winsome daughter than if she had been a crow. 
 
 IV 
 
 After that — nothing ! Neither of the boys distinguished him- 
 self at college. This was a matter of no surprise to the masters in 
 Gell's case, but in Stowell's it was a perpetual problem. Their 
 favourite solution was that the David-and- Jonathan friendship be- 
 
THE BOYHOOD OF VICTOR 8T0WELL 17 
 
 tween two boys of widely differing capacity was at the root of the 
 trouble — Gell being slow and Stowell unwilling to shame him. 
 
 As year followed year without tangible results the rumour 
 came home to Ballamoar that the son of the Deemster was not 
 fulfilling expectations. " Traa de liooar " (time enough) said 
 Robbie Creer of the farm; but Dan Baldromma^ of the mill-farm 
 in the glen, who prided himself on being no respecter of persons, 
 and made speeches in the market-place denouncing the " aristo- 
 craks " of the island, and predicting the downfall of the old order, 
 was heard to say he wasn't sorry. 
 
 " If these young cubs of the Spaker and the Dempster," said 
 Dan, " hadn't been bom with the silver spoon in their mouths we 
 should be hearing another story. When the young birds get their 
 wings push them out of the nest, I say. It's what I done with 
 my own daughter — ^my wife's, I mane. Immajetly she was fifteen 
 I packed her off to sarvice at the High Bailiff's at Castletown, and 
 now she may shift for herself for me." 
 
 The effect on the two fathers was hardly less conflicting. The 
 Speaker stormed at his son, called him a "poop " (Anglo-Manx for 
 numskull), wondered why he had troubled to bring a lad into the 
 world who would only scatter his substance, and talked about mak- 
 ing a new will to protect his daughters and to save the real estate 
 which the law gave his son by heirship. 
 
 The Deemster was silent. Term by term he read, without com- 
 ment, the Principal's unfavourable reports, with the " if s " and 
 " buts " and " alUioughs," which were intended to soften the hard 
 facts with indications of what might have been. And he said not a 
 word of remonstrance or reproach when the boy came home without 
 prizes, though he wrote in his leather-bound book that he felt some- 
 times as if he could have given its weight in gold for the least 
 of them. 
 
 At seventeen and a half Stowell became head of the school, not 
 so much by scholastic attainment as by seniority, by proficiency in 
 games and by influence over the boys. But even in this capacity 
 he had serious shortcomings. Gell had by this time developed a 
 supernatural gift of getting into scrapes, and Stowell, as head boy, 
 partly responsible for his conduct, often allowed himself to become 
 his scapegoat. 
 
 Then the rumour came home that Victor was not only a waster 
 but a wastrel. Janet wouldn't believe a word of it, 'deed she 
 wouldn't, and " Auntie Kitty " said the boy was the son of the 
 Deemster, and she had never yet seen a good cow with a bad calf. 
 But Dan Baldromma was of another opinion. 
 
 " The Dempster may be a grand man," said Dan, " but sarve 
 
18 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 him right, I say. Spare the rod, spoil the child! Show me the 
 man on this island will say I ever done that with my own child — 
 my wife's, I mane." 
 
 Finally came a report of the incident on the Darby-Haven road. 
 John Caesar, a " lump " of a lad, son of Qualtrough, the butcher 
 (a respectable man and a member of the Keys), had been brutally 
 assaulted while doing his best to protect a young nurse-girl from 
 the unworthy attentions of a college boy. The culprit was Victor 
 Stowell, and the father of the victim had demanded his prosecution 
 with the utmost rigour of the law. But out of respect for the 
 Deemster, and regard for the school, he was not to be arrested 
 on condition that he was to be expelled. 
 
 For three days this circumstantial story was on everybody's 
 lips, yet the Deemster never heard it. But he was one of those who 
 learn ill tidings without being told, and see disasters before they 
 happen, so when the Principal's letter came he showed no surprise. 
 
 Janet saw him coming downstairs dressed for dinner (he had 
 dressed for dinner during his married days and kept up the habit 
 ever afterwards, though he nearly always dined alone) just as old 
 Willie Killip, the postman, with his red lantern at his belt, came 
 through the open porch to the vestibule door. Taking his letter 
 and going into the Library, he had stood by the writing desk under 
 the " Stranger's " picture, while he opened the envelope and looked 
 at the contents of it. His face had fallen after he read the first 
 page, and it was the same as if the sun was setting on the man, but 
 when he turned the second it had lightened, and it was just as if 
 the day was dawning on him. 
 
 Then, without a moment's hesitation, he sat at the desk and 
 wrote a telegram for old Willie to take back. It was to the Prin- 
 cipal at King William's, and there was only one line in it — 
 
 " Send him home — Stowell." 
 
 After that — Janet was ready to swear on the Holy Book to it — 
 he rose and looked up into the " Stranger's " face and said, in a 
 low voice that was like that of a prayer : 
 
 " It's all right, Isobel — ^it is well." 
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 
 FATHERS AND SONS 
 
 Next day the Deemster drove to Douglas to meet his son com- 
 ing back. The weather was cold, he had to leave home in the grey 
 of morning, and he was driving in an open dog-cart, but the 
 Deemster knew what he was doing. Ten minutes before the train 
 
FATHERS AND SONS 19 
 
 came in from Castletown he had drawn up in the station yard. 
 The passengers came through from the platform and saw him 
 there, and he sal-uted some of them. Caesar Qualtrough was 
 among them, a gross-bodied and dark-faced man, darker than ever 
 that day with a look of animosity and scorn. 
 
 When, at the tail of the crowd, Victor came, in the sour silence 
 of the disgraced, no longer wearing his college cap, and with his 
 discoloured college trunk being trundled behind him, the Deemster 
 said nothing, but he indicated the seat by his side, and the boy 
 climbed up to it. Then with his white head erect and his strong 
 eyes shining he drove out of the station yard. 
 
 It was still early morning and he was in no hurry to return 
 home. For half an hour he passed slowly through the principal 
 thoroughfares of the town, bowing to everybody he knew and 
 speaking to many. It was market day and he made for the open 
 space about the old church on the quay, where the farmers' wives 
 were standing in rows with their baskets of butter and eggs, the 
 farmers' sons with their tipped-up carts of vegetables, and the 
 smaller of the farmers themselves, from all parts of the island, 
 with their carcases of sheep and oxen. Without leaving his seat 
 the Deemster bought of several of them and had his purchases 
 packed about the college trunk behind him. 
 
 It was office hours by this time and he began to oall on his 
 friends, leaving Victor outside to take care of the horse and dog- 
 cart. His first call was on the Attorney-General, Donald Wattle- 
 worth, who had been an old school-fellow of his own at King 
 William's, where forty odd years ago he had saved him from 
 many troubles. 
 
 The Attorney was now a small, dapper, very correct and rather 
 religious old gentleman (he had all his life worn a white tie and 
 elastic side-boots), with the round and wrinkled face that is oftenest 
 seen in a good old woman. For a quarter of an hour the Deemster 
 talked with him on general subjects, his Courts and forthcoming 
 cases, without saying a word about the business which had brought 
 him to Douglas. But the Attorney divined it. From his chair at 
 his desk on the upper story he could see Victor, with his pale face, 
 in the dog-cart below, twiddling the slack of the reins in his ner- 
 vous fingers, and when the Deemster rose to go he followed him 
 downstairs to the street, and whispered to the boy from behind, as 
 his father was taking his seat in front, 
 
 " Cheer up, my lad ! Many a good case has a bad start, you 
 know." 
 
 The Deemster's last call was at Government House, and again 
 Victor, to his relief, was left outside. But when, ten minutes 
 
20 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 later, the Governor, with his briar-root pipe in his hand, came into 
 the porch to see the Deemster off, and found Victor in the dog- 
 cart, looking cold and miserable, with his overcoat buttoned up to 
 his throat, he stepped out bareheaded, with tlie wind in his grey 
 hair, and shook hands with him, and said, 
 
 " Glad to see you again, my boy. You remember my girl, 
 Fenella? Yes? Well, she's at college now, but she'll be home 
 for her holiday one of these days — and thai I must bring her over 
 to see you. Good-bye ! " 
 
 The Deemster was satisfied. Not a syllable had he said from 
 first to last about the bad story that had come from Castletown, but 
 before he left Douglas that day, it was dead and done for. 
 
 " Now we'll go home," he said, and for two hours thereafter, 
 father and son, sitting side by side, and never speaking except on 
 indifferent subjects, followed the high mountain road, with its far 
 view of Ireland and Scotland, like vanishing ghosts across a broken 
 sea, the deep declivity of the glen, with Dan Baldromma's flour 
 mill at the foot of it, and the turfy lanes of the Curraghs, where 
 the curlews were crying, until they came to the big gates of Balla- 
 moar, with the tall elms and the great silence inside of them, broken 
 only by the loud cawing of the startled rooks, and then to Janet, in 
 her lace cap, at the open door of the house, waiting for her boy and 
 scarcely knowing whether to laugh or cry over him. 
 
 II 
 
 Meantime there had been another and very different homecom- 
 ing. In a comer of an open third-class carriage of the train that 
 brought Victor Stowell from Castletown there was a little servant 
 girl with a servant's tin box, tied about with a cord, on the seat be- 
 side her. This was Bessie Collister, dismissed from the High 
 Bailiff's service and being sent home to her people. She was very 
 young, scarcely more than fifteen, with coal-black eyes and eye- 
 brows and bright complexion — a bud of a girl just breaking 
 into womanhood. 
 
 Dan Baldromma had no need to say she was not his daughter. 
 Her fatherhood was doubtful. Rumour attributed it to a dashing 
 young Irish Captain, who sixteen years before had put into Ram- 
 sey for repairs after his ship, a coasting schooner had run on the 
 Carrick rock. Half the girls of " the north " had gone crazy over 
 this intoxicating person, and in the wild conflict as to who should 
 win him Liza Corteen had both won and lost, for as soon as his ship 
 was ready for sea he had disappeared, and never afterwards been 
 heard of. 
 
FATHERS AND SONS 21 
 
 Liza's baby had been born in the following spring, and two 
 years later Dan Collister, a miller from " the south " who had not 
 much cause to be proud of his own pedigree, had made a great 
 virtue of marrying her, child and all, being, as he said, on " con- 
 jergal " subjects a man of liberal views and strong opinions. 
 
 In the fourteen years that followed Liza had learned the liber- 
 ality of Dan's views on marriage and Bessie the strength of his 
 hand as well as opinions. But while the mother's nerves had been 
 broken by the reproaches about her " by-child," which had usually 
 preceded her husband's night-long nasal slumbers, the spirits of 
 the girl had not suffered much, except from fear of a certain strap 
 which he had hung in the ingle. 
 
 " The world will never grow cold on that child," people used to 
 say in her earliest days, and it seemed as if it was still true, even in 
 the depth of her present trouble. 
 
 The open railway carriage was full of farming people going up 
 to market, and among them were two buxom widows with their 
 baskets of butter and eggs on their broad knees and their faces 
 resplendent from much soap. Facing these was a tough and rough 
 old sinner who bantered them, in language more proper to the stud 
 and the farmyard, on their late married lives and the necessity of 
 beginning on fresh ones. The unvarnished gibes provoked loud 
 laughter from the other passengers, and Bessie's laugh was loud- 
 est of all. This led to the widows looking round in her direction, 
 and presently, in the recovered consciousness of her situation, she 
 heard whispers of " Johnny Qualtrough " and the " Dempster's 
 son " and then turned back to her window and cried. 
 
 There was no one to help her with her luggage when she had to 
 change at Douglas, so she carried her tin box across the platform 
 to the Ramsey train. The north-going traffic was light at that 
 hour, and sitting in an empty compartment she had time to think 
 of home and what might happen when she got there. This was a 
 vision of Dan Baldromma threatening, her mother pleading, her- 
 self screaming and all the hurly-burly she had heard so often. 
 
 But even that did not altogether frighten her now, for she had 
 one source of solace which she had never had before. She was 
 wearing a big hat with large red roses, a straw-coloured frock and 
 openwork stockings, with shoes that were much too thin for the 
 on-coming winter. And looking down at these last and remember- 
 ing she had bought them out of her wages, expressly for that walk 
 with Alick Gell, she thought of something that was immeasurably 
 more important in her mind than the incident which had led to all 
 the trouble — ^Alick had kissed her ! 
 
 She was still thinking of this, and tingling with the memory of 
 
22 THE MASTER OF MAH 
 
 it, and telling herself how good she had been not to say who h«r 
 boy was when the " big ones " questioned her, and how she would 
 never tell that, 'deed no, never, no matter what might happen to 
 other people, when the train drew up suddenly at the station that 
 was her destination and she saw her mother, a weak-eyed woman, 
 with a miserable face, standing alone on the shingly platform. 
 
 " Sakes aUve, girl, what have thou been doing now?" said 
 Mrs. CoUister, as soon as the train had gone on. " Hadn't I 
 trouble enough with thy father without this? " 
 
 But Bessie was in tears again by that time, so mother and 
 daughter lifted the tin box into a tailless market cart that stood 
 waiting in the road, climbed over the wheel to the plank seat 
 across it, and turned their horse's head towards home. 
 
 Dan Baldromma's mill stood face to the high road and back to 
 the glen and the mountains — a substantial structure with a 
 thatched and whitewashed dwelling-house attached, a few farm 
 buildings and a patch of garden, which, though warm and bright 
 in summer under its mantle of gillie-flower and fuchsia, looked 
 bleak enough now with its row of decapitated cabbage stalks and 
 the straw roofs of its xuiprotected beehives. 
 
 As mother and daughter came up in their springless cart they 
 heard the plash of the mill-wheel and the groan of the mill-stone, 
 and by that they knew that their lord and master was at work 
 within. So they stabled their horse for themselves, tipped up their 
 cart and went into the kitchen — a bare yet clean and cosy place, 
 with earthen floor, open ingle and a hearth fire, over which a kettle 
 hung by a sooty chain. 
 
 But hardly had Bessie taken off her coat and hat and sat down 
 to the cup of tea her mother had made her when the throb of the 
 mill-wheel ceased, and Dan Baldromma's heavy step came over the 
 cobbled " street" outside to the kitchen door. 
 
 He was a stoutly-built man, short and gross, with heavy black 
 eyebrows, thick and threatening lips, a lowering expression, and a 
 loud and growling voice. Seeing the girl at her meal he went over 
 to the ingle and stood with his back to the fire, and his big hands 
 behind him, while he fell on her with scorching sarcasm. 
 
 " Well ! Well ! " he said. " Back again, I see ! And you such 
 a grand woman grown since you were sitting and eating on that 
 seat before. Only sixteen years for Spring, yet sooreying (sweet- 
 hearting) already, I hear ! With no wooden-spoon man neither, 
 like your father — your stepfather, I mane ! The son and heir of 
 one of the big ones of the island, they're telling me! And' yet 
 you're not thinking mane of coming back to the house of a common 
 man like me ! Wonderful ! Wonderful ! " 
 
FATHERS AND SONS 23 
 
 Bessie felt as if her bread-and-butter were choking her, but 
 Dan, whose impure mind was not satisfied with the efl'ect of his 
 sarcasm, began to lay out at her with a bludgeon. 
 
 You fool! " he said. " You've been mixing yourself up with 
 bad doings on the road, and now a dacent lad is lying at death's 
 door through you, and the High Bailiff is after flinging you out of 
 his house as unfit for his family — ^that's it, isn't it? " 
 
 Bessie had dropped her head on the table, but Mrs. ColUster's 
 frightened face was gathering a look of courage. 
 
 " Aisy, man veen, aisy," said the mother. " Take care of thy 
 tongue, Dan." 
 
 " My tongue ? " said Dan. " It's my character I have to take 
 care of, woman. When a girl is carrying a man's name that has no 
 legal claim to it, he has a right to do that, I'm thinking." 
 " But the girl's only a child— only a child itself, man." 
 " Maybe so, but I've known girls before now, not much older 
 than she is, to bring disgrace into a dacent house and lave others 
 to live under it. ' What's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh,' 
 they're saying." 
 
 The woman flinched as if the lash of a whip had fallen on her 
 face, and Dan turned back to the girl. 
 
 " So you're a fine lady that belaves in the aristocracks, are you? 
 Well, I'm a plain man that doesn't, and nobody living in my house 
 can have any truck with them." 
 
 " But goodness me, Dan, the boy is not a dale older than her- 
 self," said Mrs. CoUister. " Nineteen years at the most, and a 
 fine boy at that." 
 
 " Chut ! Nineteen or ninety, it's all as one to me," said Dan, 
 "and this island will be knowing what sort of boy he is before 
 he has done with it." 
 
 The young cubs of the " big ones " began early. They treated 
 the daughters of decent men as their fathers treated everybody 
 — using them, abusing them, and then treading on them like dirt. 
 
 " But Manx girl are hot young huzzies," said Dan, " and the 
 half of them ought to be ducked in the mill pond. . . . What did 
 you expect this one would do for you, girl, after you had been 
 coUoquIng and cooshing and kissing with him in the dark roads? 
 Marry you? Make you the mistress of Ballamoar? Bessie 
 Corteen, the by-child of Liza CoUister? You toot! You booby! 
 You boght ! You damned idiot ! " 
 
 Just then there was the sound of wheels on the road, and Dan 
 walked to the door to look out. It was the Deemster's dog-cart, 
 coming down the glen, with father and son sitting side by side. 
 
24 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 The women heard the Deemster's steady voice saluting the miller 
 as he went by. 
 
 " Fine day, Mr. Collister ! " 
 
 " Middlin', Dempster, middlin'," said Dan, in a voice that was 
 like a growl. And then, the dog-cart being gone, he faced back 
 to the girl and said, with a bitter snort : 
 
 " So that's your man, is it — driving with the Dempster? " 
 
 " No, no," said the girl, lifting her face from the table. 
 
 " No .'' Hasn't he been flung out of his college for it — for what 
 came of it, I mane? And isn't the Dempster taking him home 
 in disgrace ? " 
 
 " It was a mistake — ^it wasn't the Dempster's son," said Bessie. 
 
 " Then who was it? " 
 
 There was no reply. 
 
 " Who was it? " 
 
 " I can't tell you." 
 
 " You mean you won't. We'll see about that, though," said 
 Dan, and returning to the fireplace, he took a short, thick leather 
 strap from a nail inside the ingle. 
 
 At sight of this the girl got up and began to scream. " Father ! 
 Father ! Father ! " 
 
 " Don't father me! Who was it? " said Dan. 
 
 The blood was rising in the mother's pallid face. " Collister," 
 she cried, " if thou touch the girl again, I'll walk straight out of 
 thy house." 
 
 " Walk, woman ! Do as you plaze ! But I must know who 
 brought disgrace on my name. Who was it? " 
 
 "Don't! Don't! Don't !" cried the girl. 
 
 The mother stepped to the door. " Collister," she repeated, 
 " for fourteen years thou's done as thou liked with me, and I've 
 been giving thee lave to do it, but lay another hand on my child . ." 
 
 " No, no, don't go, mother. I'll tell him," cried the girl. " It 
 was .... it was Alick Gell." 
 
 " You mean the son of the Spaker? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " That's good enough for me," said Dsm, and then, with an- 
 other snort, half bitter and half triumphant, he tossed the strap on 
 to the table, went out of the house and into the stable. 
 
 An hour afterwards, in his billycock hat and blue suit of Manx 
 homespun, he was driving his market-cart up the long, straight, 
 shaded lane to the Speaker's ivy-covered mansion-house, with the 
 gravelled courtyard in front of it, in which two or three peacocks 
 strutted and screamed. 
 
FATHERS AND 80N8 26 
 
 III 
 
 The Speaker had only just returned from Douglas. There had 
 been a sitting of the Keys that day and he had hurried home to tell 
 his wife an exciting story. It was about the Deemster. The big 
 man was down — going down anyway! 
 
 Archibald Gell was a burly, fuU-bearded man of a high com- 
 plexion. Although he belonged to what we called the " aristoc- 
 racy " of the island, the plebeian lay close under his skin. 
 Rumour said he was subject to paralysing brain-storms, and that 
 he could be a foul-mouthed man in his drink. But he was gener- 
 ally calm and nearly always sober. 
 
 His ruling passion was a passion for power, and his fiercest lust 
 was a lust of popularity. The Deemster was his only serious rival 
 in either, and therefore the object of his deep and secret jealousy. 
 He was j ealous of the Deemster's dignity and influence, but above 
 all (though he had hitherto hidden it even from himself) of his son. 
 
 Stooping over the fire in the drawing-room to warm his hands 
 after his long j ourney, he was talking, with a certain note of self - 
 congratulation, of what he had heard in Douglas. That ugly 
 incident at King William's had come to a head ! The Stowell boy 
 had been expelled, and the Deemster had had to drive into town to 
 fetch him home. He, the Speaker, had not seen him there, but 
 Caesar Qualtrough had. Caesar was a nasty customer to cross (he 
 had had experience of the man himself), and in the smoking-room 
 at the Keys he had bragged of what he could have done. He could 
 have put the Deemster's son in jail! Yes, ma'am, in jail! If he 
 had had a mind for it young Stowell might have slept at Castle 
 Rushen instead of Ballamoar to-night. And if he hadn't, why 
 hadn't he? Caesar wouldn't say, but everybody knew — ^he had a 
 case coming on in the Courts presently ! 
 
 " Think of it," said the Speaker^ " the first Judge in the island 
 in the pocket of a man like that ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gell, who was a fat, easy-going, good-natured soul, with 
 the gentle eyes of a sheep (her hair was a little disordered at the 
 moment, for she had only just awakened from her afternoon 
 sleep, and was still wearing her morning slippers), began to 
 make excuses. 
 
 " But mercy me, Archie," she said, " what does it amount to 
 after all — only a schoolboy squabble ? " 
 
 " Don't talk nonsense, Bella," said the Speaker. " It may 
 have been a little thing to begin with, but the biggest river that ever 
 plunged into the sea could have been put into a tea-cup somewhere." 
 
2S TEE MASTER OP MAN 
 
 This ugly business would go on, until heaven knew what it 
 would come to. The Deemster, who had bought his son's safety 
 from a blackguard without bowels, would never be able to hold up 
 his head again — 'he, the Speaker never would, he knew that much 
 anyway. As for the boy himself, he was done for. Being ex- 
 pelled from King William's no school or university across the 
 water would want him, and if he ever wished to be admitted to the 
 Manx Bar it would be the duty of his own father to refuse him. 
 
 " So that's the end of the big man, Bella — ^the beginning of the 
 end anyTvay." 
 
 Just then the peacocks screamed in the courtyard — -they always 
 screamed when visitora were approaching. Mrs. Gel! looked 
 up and the Speaker walked to the window and looked out without 
 seeing anybody. But at the next moment the drawing-room door 
 was thrust open and their eldest daughter, Isabella, with wide eyes 
 and a blank expression was saying breathlessly, 
 
 " It's Alick. He has rim away from school." 
 
 Alick came behind her, a pitiful sight, his college cap in his 
 hand, his face pale, drawn and smudged with sweat, his hair dis- 
 ordered, his clothes covered with dust, and his boots thick with soU. 
 
 " What's this she says — that you've run away ? " said the 
 Speaker. 
 
 " Yes, I have — I told her so myself," said Alick, who was 
 half crying. 
 
 " Did you though.'' And now perhaps you will tell me some- 
 thing — why.'' " 
 
 " Because Stowell had been expelled, and I couldn't stay when 
 he was gone." 
 
 " Couldn't you now? And why couldn't you? " 
 
 " He was innocent." 
 
 " Innocent, was he? Who says he was innocent? " 
 
 " I do. Sir, because .... it was I." 
 
 It was a sickening moment for the Speaker. He gasped as if 
 something had smitten him in the mouth, and his burly figure 
 almost staggered. 
 
 " You did it ... . what Stowell was expelled for ? " he 
 stammered. 
 
 " Yes, Sir," said Alick, and then, still with the tremor of a sob 
 in his voice, he told his story. It was the same that he had told 
 twice before, but with a sequel added. Although he had confessed 
 to the Principal, they had expelled Stowell. Not publicly per- 
 haps, but it had been expelling him all the same. Four days they 
 had kept him in his study, without saying what they meant to do 
 with him. Then this morning, while the boys were at prayers 
 
FATHERS AND SONS 27 
 
 they had heard carriage wheels come up to the door of the Prin- 
 cipal's house, and when they came out of Chapel the Study was 
 empty and Stowell was gone. 
 
 " And then," said the Speaker (with a certain pomp of con- 
 tempt now), " without more ado you ran away? " 
 
 " Yes, Sir," answered the boy, " by the lavatory window when 
 we were breaking up after breakfast." 
 
 " Where did you get the money to travel with? " 
 
 " I had no money. Sir. I walked." 
 
 " Walked from Castletown? What have you eaten since 
 breakfast? " 
 
 " Only what I got on the road. Sir." 
 
 " You mean .... begged? " 
 
 " I asked at a farm by Foxdale for a glass of milk and the 
 farmer's wife gave me some bread as well. Sir." 
 
 " Did she know who you were ? " 
 
 " She asked me — I had to answer her." 
 
 " You told her you were my son? " 
 
 " Yes, Sir." 
 
 " And perhaps — feeling yourself such a fine fellow, what you 
 were doing there, and why you were running away from school? " 
 
 " Yes, Sir." 
 
 " You fool ! You infernal fool ! " 
 
 The Speaker had talked himself out of breath and for a mo- 
 ment his wife intervened. 
 
 " Alick," she said, " if it was you, as you say, who walked 
 out with the girl, who was she ? " 
 
 " She was .... a servant girl, mother." 
 
 "But who?" 
 
 " Tut ! " said the Speaker, " what does it matter who ? . . . . 
 You say you confessed to the Principal? " 
 
 " Yes, Sir." 
 
 " Then if he chose to disregard your confession, and to act on 
 his own judgment, what did it matter to you? " 
 
 " It was wrong to expel Stowell for what I had done and I 
 couldn't stand it," said the boy. 
 
 " You couldn't stand it! You dimce! If you were younger I 
 should take the whip to you." 
 
 The Speaker was feeling the superiority of his son's position, 
 but that only made him the more furious. 
 
 " I suppose you know what this running away will mean when 
 people come to hear of it? " 
 
 Alick made no answer. 
 
28 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " You've given the story a fine start, it seems, and it won't take 
 long to travel." 
 
 StiU Alick made no answer. 
 
 " Stowell will be the martyr and you'll be the culprit, and that 
 ugly incident of the boy with the broken skull will wear another 
 complexion." 
 
 " I don't care about that," cried Alick. 
 
 " You don't care ! " 
 
 " I had to do my duty to my chum. Sir." 
 
 " And what about your duty to me, and to your mother and to 
 your sisters ? Was it your ' duty ' to bring disgrace on all of us .'' " 
 
 Alick dropped his head. 
 
 " You shan't do that, though, if I can help it. Go away and 
 wash your dirty face and get something on your stomach. You're 
 going back to Castletown in the morning." 
 
 " I won't go back to school. Sir," said Alick. 
 
 "Won't you, though? We'll see about that. I'll take you 
 back." 
 
 " Then I'll run away again. Sir." 
 
 " Where to, you jackass.'' Not to this house, I promise you." 
 
 " I'll get a ship and go to sea, Sir." 
 
 " Then get a ship and go to sea, and to hell, too, if you want to. 
 You fool! You'damcned blockhead!" 
 
 After the Speaker had swept the boy from the room, his mother 
 was crying. " Only eighteen years for harvest," she was saying, 
 as if trying to excuse him. And then, as if seeking to fix the 
 blame elsewhere, she added, 
 
 " Who was the girl, I wonder } " 
 
 " God's sake, woman," cried the Speaker, " what does it mat- 
 ter who she was ? Some Castletown huzzy, I suppose." 
 
 The peacocks were screaming again ; they had been screaming 
 for some time, and the front-door bell had been ringing, but in the 
 hubbub nobody had heard them. But now the parlour-maid came 
 to tell the Speaker that Mr. Daniel CoUister of Baldromma was in 
 the porch and asking to see him. 
 
 IV 
 
 Dan came into the room with his rolling walk, his eyes wild and 
 dark, his billy-cock hat in his hand and his black hair ' strooked ' 
 flat across his forehead, where a wet brush had left it. 
 
 " Good evening, Mr. Spaker ! You too, Mistress Gell ! It's 
 the twelfth to-morrow, but I thought I would bring my HoUantide 
 rent to-day." 
 
FATHERS AND SONS 29 
 
 " Sit down," said the Speaker, who had given him meagre 
 welcome. 
 
 Dan drew a chair up to a table, took from the breast pocket of 
 his monkey-jacket a bulging parcel in a red print handkerchief 
 (looking like a roadman's dinner), untied the knots of it, and 
 disclosed a quantity of gold and silver coins, and a number of 
 Manx bank notes creased and soiled. These he counted out with 
 much deliberation amid a silence like that which comes between 
 thunderclaps — the Speaker, standing by the fireplace, coughing to 
 compose himself, his wife blowing her nose to get rid of her tears, 
 and no other sounds being audible except the nasal breathing of 
 Dan Baldromma, who had hair about his nostrils. 
 
 " Count it for yourself; I belave you'll find it right. Sir." 
 
 " Quite right. I suppose you'll want a receipt? " 
 
 " If you plaze." 
 
 The Speaker sat at a small desk, and, as well as he could (for 
 his hand was trembling), he wrote the receipt and handed it across 
 the table. 
 
 " And now about my lease," said Dan. 
 
 " What about it? " said the Speaker. 
 
 " It runs out a year to-day. Sir, and Willie Kerruish, the advo- 
 cate, was telling me at the Michaelmas mart you were not for re- 
 newing it. Do you stiU hould to that, Mr. Spaker? " 
 
 " Certainly I do," said the Speaker. " I don't want to enter 
 into discussions, but I think you'll be the better for another land- 
 lord and I for another tenant." 
 
 There was another moment of silence, broken only by Dan's 
 nasal breathing, and then he said: 
 
 " Mr. Spaker, the Dempster's son has come home in disgrace, 
 they're saying." 
 
 " What's that got to do with it? " said the Speaker. 
 
 " My daughter has come home in disgrace, too — ^my wife's 
 daughter, I mane." 
 
 Mrs. Gell raised herself in her easy chair. " Was it your girl, 
 then ..." she began. 
 
 " It was, ma'am. Bessie Corteen — CoUister, they're calling 
 her." 
 
 " What's all this to me? " said the Speaker. 
 
 " She's telling me it's a mistake about the Dempster's son. Sir. 
 It was somebody else's lad did the mischief." 
 
 " I see you are well informed," said the Speaker. " Well, 
 what of it? " 
 
 " Csesar Qualtrough might have prosecuted but he didn't, out 
 of respect for the Dempster," said Dan. 
 
30 tbe master of man 
 
 " So they say," said the Speaker. 
 
 " But if somebody gave him a scute into the truth he mightn't 
 be so lenient with another man — one other anyway." 
 
 The Speaker was silent. 
 
 " There have been bits of breezes in the Kays, they're tell- 
 ing me." 
 
 Still the Speaker was silent. 
 
 " Caesar and me were middling well acquaint when I was mill- 
 ing at Ballabeg and he was hutching at Port St. Mary — ^in fact we 
 were same as brothers." 
 
 " I see what you mean to do, Mr. CoUister," said the Speaker, 
 " but you can save yourself the trouble. My lad is in this house 
 now if you want to know, but I'm sending him to sea, and before 
 you can get to Castletown he wiU have left the island." 
 
 " And what will the island say to that Sir ? " said Dan. " That 
 Archibald Gell, Spaker of the Kays, chairman of everything, and 
 the biggest man going, barring the Dempster, has had to send his 
 son away to save him from the lock-up." 
 
 The Speaker took two threatening strides forward, and Dan 
 rose to his feet. There was silence again as the two men stood face 
 to face, but this time it was broken by the Speaker's breathing also. 
 Then he turned aside and said, with a shamefaced look: 
 
 " I'll hear what Kerruish has to say. I have to see him in 
 the morning." 
 
 " I lave it with you. Sir; I lave it with you," said Dan. 
 
 "Good-day, Mr. CoUister." 
 
 " Good-day to you, Mr. Spaker ! And you, too. Mistress Gell !" 
 said Dan. But having reached the door of the room he stopped 
 and added: 
 
 " There's one thing more, though. If my girl is to live with me 
 she must work for her meat, and there must be no more sooreying." 
 
 " That will be all right — I know my son," said the Speaker. 
 
 " And I know my step-daughter," said Dan. " These things go 
 on. A rolling snowball doesn't get much smaller. Maybe that 
 Captain out of Ireland isn't gone from the island yet — his spirit, 
 I mane. Keep your lad away from Baldromma. It will be best, 
 I promise you." 
 
 Then the peacocks in the courtyard screamed again and the 
 jolting of a springless cart was heard going over the gravel. The 
 two in the drawing-room listened until the sound of the wheels had 
 died away in the lane to the high road, and then the Speaker said: 
 
 " That's what comes of having children ! We thought it bad 
 for the Deemster to be in the pocket of a man like Caesar Qual- 
 trough, but to be under the harrow of Dan Baldromma ! " 
 
ENTER FENELLA STANLEY 31 
 
 " Aw, dear! Aw, dear! " said Mrs. Gell. 
 
 " He was right about Alick going to sea, though," said the 
 Speaker, and, touching the bell for the parlour-maid, he told her 
 to tell his son to come back to him. 
 
 Alick was in the dining-room by this time, washed and brushed 
 and doing his best to drink a pot of tea and eat a plate of bread- 
 and-butter, amid the remonstrances of his three sisters, who, see- 
 ing events from their own point of view, were rating him roimdly 
 on associating with a servant. 
 
 " I wonder you hadn't more respect for your sisters ? " said 
 Isabella. 
 
 " What are people to think of us — Fenella Stanley, for in- 
 stance ? " said Adelaide. 
 
 " I declare I shall be ashamed to show my face in Government 
 House again," said Verbena. 
 
 " Oh, shut up and let a fellow eat," said Alick, and then some- 
 thing about " first-class flunkeys." 
 
 But at that moment the parlour-maid came with his father's 
 message and he had to return to the drawing-room. 
 
 " On second thoughts," said the Speaker, " we have decided 
 that you are not to go to sea. We have only one son, and I sup- 
 pose we must do our best with him. You haven't brains enough for 
 building, so, if you are not to go back to school, you must stay on 
 the land and learn to look after these farms in Andreas." 
 
 " I'll do my best to please you. Sir," said Alick. 
 
 " But listen to this," said the Speaker, " Dan Baldromma has 
 been here, and we know who the girl was. There is to be no more 
 mischief in that quarter. You must never see her or hear from 
 her again as long as you live — is it a promise .'' " 
 
 " Yes, Sir," said Alick, and he meant to keep it. 
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 ENTKR FENELLA STANLEY 
 
 The winter passed, the spring came and nothing was done for 
 Victor. His father made no effort to provide for his future, 
 whether at another school, at college, or in a profession. 
 
 " I wonder at the Dempster, I really do," said Auntie Kitty. 
 
 " Leave him alone," said Janet — it would all come right 
 some day. 
 
 Left to himself, Victor became the great practical joker of the 
 countryside. Every prank for which no other author could be 
 
32 THE MASTER OP MAN 
 
 found was attributed to him. If any pretentious person fell into 
 a ridiculous mare's nest people would say, 
 
 " But where was young Stowell while that was going on ? " 
 
 In this dubious occupation of " putting the fun " on folks he 
 soon found the powerful assistance of Alick GeU. That young 
 gentleman, for his training on the land, had been handed over 
 to the charge of old Tom Kermode, the Speaker's steward. But 
 Tom, good man, foresaw the possibility of being supplanted in his 
 position if the Speaker's son acquired sufficient knowledge to take 
 it, and therefore he put no unnecessary obstacles in the way of the 
 boy's industrious efforts not to do so. On the contrary he encour- 
 aged them, with the result that Alick and Victor foregathered 
 again, and having nothing better to do than to make mischief, they 
 proceeded to make it. 
 
 How much the Deemster heard of his son's doings nobody 
 knew. Twice a day he sat at meat with him without speaking a 
 word of reproof. But Janet saw that when report was loudest he 
 wrote longer than usual in his leather-bound book before going to 
 bed, and that his head was lower than ever in the morning. 
 
 At length Janet entered into a secret scheme with herself for 
 lifting it up again. This consisted in prompting her dear boy to do 
 something, to make an effort, to justify himself. So making 
 excuse of the Deemster's business she would take Victor's break- 
 fast to his bedroom before he had time to get up to it. 
 
 It was a bright room to the north-east, flooded with sunshine at 
 that season after she had drawn the blind, and fresh, after she had 
 thrown up the sash, with morning air that smacked of the blue sea 
 (which came humming down from the dim ghost of Galloway), and 
 relished of the sandy soil of Man, with its yellowing crops of rust- 
 ling oats, over which the larks and the linnets tumbled and sang. 
 
 Victor was always asleep when she went in at eight o'clock, for 
 he slept like a top, and after she had scolded him for lying late, he 
 would sit up in bed, with his sleepy eyes and tousled hair, to eat 
 his breakfast, while she turned his stockings, shook out his shirt, 
 gathered up his clothes (they were usually distributed all over the 
 room) and talked. 
 
 Victor noticed whatever she began upon she always ended 
 with the same subject. It was Fenella Stanley. That girl was 
 splendid, and she was getting on marvellously. Still at college 
 " across " ? Yes, Newnham they were calling it, and she was 
 carrying everything before her — ^prizes, scholarships, honours — 
 goodness knows what. 
 
 The island was ringing with her praise but Janet was hearing 
 eyerything direct from Miss Green, the Governor's housekeeper, 
 
ENTER FENELLA STANLEY 33 
 
 with whom she kept up a constant correspondence. That womaii 
 worshipped the girl — ^you never saw the like, never! As for the 
 Governor, it was enough to bring tears into a woman's eyes to see 
 how proud he was of his daughter. When he had news that she 
 had taken a new honour it was like new life to the old man. You 
 would think the sun was shining all over the house, and that was 
 saying something there — the Keys being so troublesome. Of 
 course he was " longing " for his daughter to come home to him, 
 and that was only natural, but knowing how hard she was working 
 now — six in the morning until six in the evening, Catherine Green 
 was sajring — ^he was waiting patiently. 
 
 " Aw, yes, yes, that's the way with fathers," said Janet. 
 " Big men as they may be themselves, they are prouder of their 
 children's successes than of their own — far prouder." 
 
 The effect of Janets scheme was the reverse of what she had 
 expected. By a law of the heart of a boy, which the good soul 
 knew nothing of, Victor resented the industry, success and repu- 
 tation of Fenella Stanley. It was a kind of rebuke to his own 
 idleness. The girl was a bookworm and would develop into a 
 blue-stocking ! He had not seen her for years and did not want to 
 see her, but in his mind's eye he pictured her as she must be now — 
 a pale-faced young person in a short blue skirt and big boots, with 
 cropped hair and perhaps spectacles ! 
 
 Describing this vision to Alick Gell, as they were drying them- 
 selves on the shore after a swim, Victor said with emphasis that if 
 there was one thing he hated it was a woman who was half a man. 
 
 " Same here," said Alick, who had had liberal doses of the 
 same medicine at home, less delicately administered by his sis- 
 ter Isabella. 
 
 But where Janet failed, a greater advocate, nature itself, was 
 soon to succeed. The boys were then in their nineteenth year, 
 a pair of full-grown, healthy, handsome lads as ever trod the 
 heather, or stripped to the sea, but there was a great world which 
 had not yet been revealed to either of them — the world of woman. 
 That world was to be revealed to one of them now. 
 
 II 
 
 It was a late afternoon early in September. The day had been 
 wonderful. Over the bald crown above Druidsdale the sun came 
 slanting across the Irish Sea from a crimsoning sky beyond the 
 purple crests of the Morne mountains. Stowell and GeU had been 
 camping out for two days in the Manx hiUs, and, parting at a 
 junction of paths, Gell had gone down towards Douglas while 
 
34 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Stowell had dropped into the cool dark depths of the glen that 
 led homewards. 
 
 Victor was as brown as a berry. He was wearing long, thick- 
 soled yellow boots almost up to his knees, with his trousers tucked 
 into them, a loose yellow shirt, rolled up to the elbows of his strong 
 round arms, no waistcoat, his Norfolk j acket thrown over his left 
 shoulder, and a knapsack strapped on his back. 
 
 With long, plunging strides he was coming down the glen, sing- 
 ing sometimes in a voice that was partly drowned by the louder 
 water where it dipped into a dub, when, towards the Curragh end 
 of it, on the " brough " side of the river, he came upon a start- 
 ling vision. 
 
 It was a girl. She was about seventeen years of age, bare- 
 headed and bare-footed, and standing ankle-deep in the water. 
 Her lips, and a little of the mouth at either side, were stained blue 
 with blackberries — she had clearly been picking them and had 
 taken off shoes and stockings to get at a laden bush. 
 
 She was splendidly tall, and had bronze brown hair, with a glint 
 of gold when the sun shone on it. The sun was shining on it now, 
 through a gap in the thinning trees that overhung the glen, and 
 with the leaves pattering over her head, and the river running at 
 her feet, it was almost as if she herself were singing. 
 
 With her spare hand she was holding up her dress, which was 
 partly of lace — light and loose and semi-transparent — and when 
 a breeze, which was blowing from the sea, lapped it about her body 
 there was a hint of the white, round;, beautiful form beneath. Her 
 eyes were dark and brilliantly full, and her face was magnificently 
 intellectual, so clear-cut and clean. And yet she was so feminine, 
 so womanly, such a girl ! 
 
 She must have heard Stowell's footsteps, and perhaps his sing- 
 ing as he approached, for she turned to look up at him — calmly, 
 rather seriously, a little anxiously but without the slightest con- 
 fusion. And he looked at her, pausing to do so, without being 
 quite aware of it, and feeling for one brief moment as if wind and 
 water had suddenly stopped and the world stood still. 
 
 There was a moment of silence, in which he felt a certain chill, 
 and she a certain warmth, and boUi a certain dryness at the throat. 
 The girl was the first to recover self-control. Her face sweet- 
 ened to a smile, and then, in a voice that was a little husky, and yet 
 sounded to him like music, she said, as if she had asked and 
 answered an earlier question for herself: 
 
 " But of course you don't know who / am, do you ? " 
 
 He did. Although she was so utterly unlike what he had 
 
ENTER FENELLA STANLEY 35 
 
 expected (what he had told himself he expected) he knew — she 
 was Fenella Stanley. 
 
 As often as he thought of it afterwards he could never be quite 
 sure what he had said to her in those first moments. He could only 
 guess at what it must have been by his vivid memory of what she 
 had said in reply. 
 
 She watched him^ womanlike, for a moment longer, to see what 
 impression she had made upon him, now that she knew what im- 
 pression he had made upon her. Then she glanced down at her 
 bare feet, that looked yellow on the pebbles in the running water, 
 and then at her shoes and stockings, which, with her parasol, lay 
 on the bank, and said: 
 
 " I suppose you ought to go away while I get out of this ? " 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 He never knew what made him say that, but she glanced up at 
 him again, with the answering sunshine of another smile, and said : 
 
 " Well, you needn't, if you don't want to." 
 
 After that she stepped out of the river, and sat on the grass to 
 dry her feet and pull on her stockings. As she did so, and he stood 
 watching, forgetting (such was the spell of things) to turn his 
 eyes away, she shot another look up at him, and said: 
 
 " I remember that the last time I was in these parts you ordered 
 me off. Sir." 
 
 " And the last time I was at Government House you turned me 
 out of the tennis court," he answered. 
 
 She laughed. He laughed. They both laughed together. Also 
 they both trembled. But by the time she had put on her shoes he 
 was feeling braver, so he went down on his knees to tie her laces. 
 
 It was a frightening ordeal, but he got through at last, and to 
 cover their embarrassment, while the lacing was going on, they 
 came to certain explanations. 
 
 Yesterday the Governor had telegraphed to the Deemster that 
 he would like to fulfil his promise to visit Ballamoar and stay 
 the night if convenient. So they had driven over in the carriage 
 and arrived about two hours ago, and were going back to- 
 morrow morning. 
 
 " Of course you were not there when we came," she said, " be- 
 ing, it seems, a gentleman of gipsy habits, so when Janet (I mean 
 Miss Curphey) mentioned at tea that you were likely to come down 
 the glen about sunset . . . . " 
 
 " Then you were coming to meet me? " he said. 
 
 She laughed again, having said more than she had intended and 
 finding no way of escape from it. 
 
 When aU was done and he had helped her up (how his fingers 
 
36 TEE MASTER 09 MAN 
 
 tingled!) and they stood side by side for the first time (she was 
 less than half a head shorter than himself and her eyes seemed 
 almost on the level of his own) and they were ready to go, he 
 suddenly remembered that they were on the wrong side for the 
 road. So if she hadn't to take off her boots and stockings and wade 
 through the water again, or else walk half a mile down the glen to 
 the bridge, he would have to carry her across the river. 
 
 Without more ado she let him do it — ^picking her up in his 
 quivering arms and striding through the water in his long boots. 
 
 Then being dropped to her feet she laughed again; and he 
 laughed, and they went on laughing, all the way down the glen 
 road, and through the watery lanes of the Curragh, where the sally 
 bushes were singing loud in the breeze from the sea — ^but not so 
 loud as the hearts of this pair of children. 
 
 Ill 
 
 That night, after dinner, leaving the Deemster and the Gover- 
 nor at the table, discussing insular subjects (a constitutional 
 change which was then being mooted), Victor took Fenella out on 
 to the piazza (his mother had called it so), the uncovered wooden 
 terrace which overlooked the coast. 
 
 He was in a dark blue jacket suit, not yet having possessed 
 evening wear, but she was in a gauzy light dress with satin slip- 
 pers, and her bronze-brown hair was curled about her face in 
 bewitching ringlets. 
 
 The evening was very quiet, almost breathless, with hardly a 
 leaf stirring. The revolving light in the lighthouse on the Point 
 of Ayre (seven miles away on its neck of land covered by a wilder- 
 ness of white stones) was answering to the far-off gleam of the 
 light on the Mull of Galloway, while the sky to the west was a 
 slumberous red, as if the night were dreaming of the departed day. 
 
 They had not yet recovered from their experience in the glen, 
 and, sitting out there in the moonlight (for the moon had just sailed 
 through a rack of cloud), they were still speaking involuntarily, 
 and then laughing nervously at nothing — nothing but that tingling 
 sense of sex which made them afraid of each other, that mysterious 
 call of man to maid which, when it first comes, is as pure as an 
 angel's whisper. 
 
 " What a wonderful day it has been! " she said, 
 
 " The most wonderful day I have ever known," he answered. 
 
 " And what a wonderful home you have here," she said. 
 
 " Haven't we? " he replied. And then he told her that over 
 there in the dark lay Ireland, and over there Scotland, and over 
 
ENTER FBNELLA STANLEY 37 
 
 there England, and straight ahead was Norway and the North 
 Pole. 
 
 That caught them up into the zone of great things, the eterni- 
 ties, the vast darkness out of which the generations come and 
 towards which they go ; and, having f oimd his voice at last, he began 
 to tell her how the island came to be peopled by its present race. 
 
 This was the very scene of the Norse invasion — ^the Vikings 
 from Iceland having landed on this spot a thousand years ago. 
 When the old sea king (his name was Orry) came ashore at the 
 Lhen (it was on a starlight night like this) the native inhabitants 
 of Man had gone down to challenge him. " Where do you come 
 from } " they had cried, and then, pointing to the milky way, he 
 had answered, " That's the road to my country." But the native 
 people had fought him to throw him back into the sea — yes, men 
 and women, too, they say. This very ground between them and the 
 coast had been the battlefield, and it must still be full of the dead 
 who had died that day. 
 
 " What a wonderful story ! " she said. 
 
 " Isn't it.? " 
 
 " The women fought too, you say? " 
 
 " Thousands of them, side by side with their men, and they 
 were the mothers of the Manxmen of to-day." 
 
 " How glorious ! How perfectly glorious ! " 
 
 And then, clasping her hands about her knee, and looking 
 steadfastly into the dark of the night, she, on her part, told him 
 something. It was about a great new movement which was begin- 
 ning in England for a change in the condition of women. Oh, it 
 was wonderful ! Miss Clough, the Principal, and all the girls at 
 Newnham were ablaze with it, and it was going to sweep through 
 the world. In the past the attitude towards women of literature, 
 law, even religion, had been so unfair, so cruel. She could cry to 
 think of it — the long martyrdom of woman through all the ages. 
 
 " Do you know," she said, " I think a good deal of the Bible 
 itself is very wicked towards women .... That's shocking, 
 isn't it? " 
 
 " Oh, no, no," said Victor — ^he was struggling to follow her, 
 and not finding it easy. 
 
 " But all that will be changed some day," said Fenella. 
 
 It might require some terrible world-trouble to change it, some 
 cataclysm, some war, perhaps (she didn't know what), but it mould 
 be changed — she was sure it would. And then, when woman took 
 her rightful place beside man, as his equal, his comrade, his other 
 self, they would see what would happen. 
 
 "What?" 
 
38 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 All the old laws, so far as they concerned the sexes (and which 
 of them didn't?) would have to be made afresh, and all the old 
 tales about men and women (and which of them were not?) would 
 have to be re-told. 
 
 " The laws made afresh, you say? " 
 
 " Yes, and some of the judges, too, perhaps." 
 
 " And all the old tales re-told? " 
 
 " Every one of them, and then they will be new ones, because 
 woman will have a new and far worthier place in them." 
 
 They had left the stained-glass door to the dining-room ajar, 
 and at a pause in Fenella's story they heard the voice of the Gover- 
 nor, in conversation with the Deemster on the constitutional ques- 
 tion, saying, 
 
 " Well, well, old friend, I don't suppose either the millennium 
 will dawn or the deluge come whether the Keys are reformed 
 or not." 
 
 That led Victor to ask Fenella what her father thought of her 
 opinions. 
 
 " Oh well," she said, " he doesn't agree. But then .... 
 (her voice was coming with a laugh from her throat now) I don't 
 quite approve of father." 
 
 This broke the spell of their serious talk, and he asked if she 
 would like to go down to an ancient church on the seaward bound- 
 ary of the old battlefield — it was a ruin and looked wonderful in 
 the moonlight. 
 
 She said she would love to, and, slipping indoors to make 
 ready, she came back in a moment with a silk handkerchief about 
 her head, which made her face intoxicating to the boy who was 
 waiting for it, and feeling for the first time the thrilling, quivering 
 call of body and soul that is the secret of the continued race. So 
 off they went together with a rhythmic stride, down the sandy road 
 to the shore — he bareheaded, and she in her white dress and the 
 satin slippers in which her footsteps made no noise. 
 
 The ruined church was on a lonesome spot on the edge of the 
 sea, with the sea's moan always over it, and the waves thundering 
 in the dark through the cavernous rocks beneath. 
 
 Fenella bore herself bravely until they reached the roofless 
 chancel, where an elm tree grew, and the moonlight, now coming 
 and going among the moving clouds, was playing upon the tomb of 
 some old churchman whose unearthed bones the antiquaries had 
 lately covered with a stone and surrounded by an iron railing, and 
 then she clutched at Victor's arm, held on tightly and trembled 
 like a child. 
 
 That restored the balance of things a little, and going home (it 
 
ENTBR FENELLA STANLEY 39 
 
 ■was his turn to hold on now) he could not help chaiEng her on her 
 feminine fear. Was that one of the old stories that would have to 
 be re-told .... when the great world-change came, the great 
 cataclysm ? 
 
 "Oh, that? Well, of course .... (he believed she was 
 blushing, though in the darkness he could not see) women may not 
 have the strength and courage of men — ^the physical courage, 
 I mean . . . . " 
 
 " Only physical? " he asked. 
 
 She stammered again, and said that naturally men would always 
 be men and women, women. 
 
 " You don't want that altered, do you? " she said. 
 
 " Oh no, not I, not a bit," said Victor, and then there was more 
 laughter (rather tremulous laughter now) and less talking for the 
 next five minutes. 
 
 They had got back to the piazza by this time, and knowing that 
 her face was in the shaft of light that came through the glass door 
 from the dining-room, Fenella turned quickly and shot away 
 upstairs. 
 
 For the first time in his life Victor did not sleep. until after 
 three o'clock next morning. He saw the moonlight creep across 
 the cocoa-nut matting on his bedroom floor and heard the clock on 
 the staircase landing strike every hour from eleven to three. 
 
 Now that he was alone he was feeling degrsided and ashamed. 
 Here was this splendid girl touching life at its core, dealing with 
 the great things, the everlasting things, attuning her heart to the 
 future and the big eternal problems .... while he ! 
 
 But under all the self-reproach there was something joyous 
 too, something delicious, something that made him hot and dizzy 
 and would not let him sleep, because a blessed hymn of praise was 
 singing within, and it was so wonderful to be alive. 
 
 He could have kicked himself next morning when he awoke 
 late, and found the broad sunshine in his bedroom, and heard from 
 Janet that Fenella had been up two hours and all over the stables 
 and the plantation. 
 
 After breakfast (downstairs for him this time) the Governor's 
 big blue landau, with two fine Irish bays, driven by an EngHsh 
 coachman, came sweeping round to the front and he went out in the 
 morning sunshine, with the Deemster and Janet, to see their 
 guests away. 
 
 The Governor shook hands with him warmly, but Fenella (who 
 was wearing a coat and some kind of transparent green scarf about 
 her neck, and thanked the Deemster and kissed Janet as she was 
 
40 THE MABTEB OF MAN 
 
 stepping into the carriage) looked another -way when she was 
 saying good-bye to him. 
 
 He slammed the door to, and stepped back, and the carriage 
 started, and (while the other two went indoors) he stood and 
 looked after it as it went winding down the drive, amid the awak- 
 ened clamour of the rooks, until it came to the turn where the trees 
 were to hide it, and then Fenella faced round and waved a hand to 
 him. At the next moment the carriage had gone — and then the sim 
 went out, and the world was dead. 
 
 That night after dinner Victor told his father that he would 
 like to go into the Attorney-General's office, as a first step towards 
 taking up the profession of the law. 
 
 " Good — very good," said the Deemster. 
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 THE STUDENT-AT-LAW 
 
 Fexella Stanley had not awakened early, as Janet had sup- 
 posed — she had never been to sleep. Her bedroom had been to the 
 north-east, and she, too, had seen the moonlight creep across her 
 floor ; and when it was gone, and all else was dark, she had felt the 
 revolving light from the stony neck of the Point of Ayre passing 
 every other minute over her closed eyelids. 
 
 She was too much of a woman not to know what was happening 
 to her, but none the less she was confused and startled. Do what 
 she would to compose herself she could not lie quiet for more than 
 a moment. Her blood was alternately flowing through her veins 
 like soft milk and bounding to her heart like a geyser. 
 
 As soon as the daylight came and the rooks began to oaw she 
 got up and dressed, and went through the sleeping house, with its 
 drawn blinds, and let herself out by the glass door to the piazza. 
 
 Of course she turned towards the shore. It was glorious to be 
 down there alone, on the ribbed sand, with the salt air on her lips 
 and the odour of the seaweed in her nostrils and the rising sun 
 glistening in her eyes over tlie shimmering and murmuring sea. 
 But it was still sweeter to return by the sandy road, past the 
 chancel of the old church (how silly to have been afraid of it!) 
 and to see footsteps here and there — his and hers. 
 
 The world was astir by this time, with the sun riding high and 
 the earth smoking from its night-long draughts of dew, the sheep 
 munching the wet grass in the fields on either side, and the cattle 
 lowing in the closed-up byres, waiting to be milked. But the 
 white blind of Victor's room (she was sure it was Victor's) was still 
 
THE BTUDENT-AT-LAW 41 
 
 down, like a closed eyelid, and she had half a mind to throw a 
 handful of gravel at it and then dart indoors. 
 
 Back in the house there were some embarrassing moments. 
 Breakfast was rather a trying time after Victor came down, look- 
 ing a little sheepish, and that last moment on the path was difficult, 
 when he was holding the carriage door open and saying good-bye 
 to her; but she could not deny herself that wave of the hand as 
 they turned the corner of the drive — she was perfectly sure he 
 must be looking after them. 
 
 After that — ^misery ! Every day at Government House seemed 
 to bring her an increasing heartache, and when she returned to 
 College a fortnight later, and fell back into the swing of her 
 former life there (the glowing and thrilling life she had described 
 to Victor) a bitter struggle with herself began. 
 
 It was a struggle between the mysterious new-born desires of 
 her awakening womanhood and the task she had supposed to be her 
 duty — to consecrate her whole life to the liberation of her sex, 
 giving up, like a nun if need be, all the joys that were for ever 
 whispering in the ears of women, that she might devote herself 
 body and soul to the salvation of her suffering sisters. 
 
 Three months passed in which Fenella believed herself to be 
 the unhappiest girl in the world. Moments of guilty joy and 
 defiance mingled with hours of self-reproach. And then dear, 
 good people were sometimes so cruel ! Miss Green, her father's 
 housekeeper, never wrote without saying something about Victor 
 Stowell. He was a student-at-law now, and was getting along 
 wonderfully. 
 
 Once Miss Green enclosed a letter from Janet asking Fenella 
 for her photograph. For nearly a week that was a frightful 
 ordeal, but in the end the woman triumphed over the nun and she 
 sent the picture. 
 
 " Dear Janet," she wrote, " it was very sweet of you to wish for 
 my photograph to remind you of that dear and charming day I 
 spent at Ballamoar, so I have been into Cambridge and had one 
 specially taken for you, in the dress I wore on that lovely August 
 afternoon which I shall never forget. ..." 
 
 It had been a tingling delight to write that letter, but the 
 moment she had posted it, with the new Cambridge photograph, 
 she could have died of vexation and shame — it must be so utterly 
 obvious whom she had sent them to. 
 
 As the Christmas vacation approached she began to be afraid 
 of herself. If she returned to the island she would be sure to 
 see Victor Stowell (he must be in Douglas now) and that would 
 be the end of everything. 
 
42 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 After a tragic struggle, and many secret tears, she wrote to her 
 father to say what numbers of the Newnham girls were going to 
 Italy for the holidays and how she would love to see the pictures 
 at Florence. To her consternation the Governor answered imme- 
 diately, saying, 
 
 " Excellent idea ! It will do you good, and I shall be happy to 
 get away from ' the Kays ' for a month or two, so I am writing 
 at once to engage rooms at the Washington." 
 
 She could have cried aloud after reading this letter, but there 
 was no help for it now. 
 
 Truly, the heart of a girl is a deep riddle and only He Who 
 made can read it. 
 
 II 
 
 In the Attorney-General's oflSce Victor Stowell was going from 
 strength to strength. There was a vast deal of ordinary drudgery 
 in his probationary stage, but he was bearing it with amazing 
 patience. His natural talents were recognised as astonishing and 
 he was being promoted by rapid degrees. After a few months the 
 Attorney wrote to the Deemster : 
 
 " Unless I am mistaken your boy is going to be a great lawyer 
 — the root of the matter seems to be in him." 
 
 Not content with the routine work of the office he took up (by 
 help of some scheme of University extension) the higher education 
 which had been cut short by his dismissal from King William's, 
 and in due course obtained degrees. One day, after talking with 
 Victor, the Bishop of the island was heard to say: 
 
 " If that young fellow had been sent up to Oxford, as he ought 
 to have been, he might have taken a first-class in Literae Hu- 
 inanioret and became the most brilliant man of his year." 
 
 The Attorney-General's office was a large one, and it contained 
 several other students-at-law. Among them now was Alick GeU, 
 who had prevailed upon his mother to prevail upon his father to 
 permit him to follow Stowell. 
 
 " God's sake, woman," the Speaker had said, " let him go then, 
 and make one more rascally Manx lawyer." 
 
 But neither Alick's industrious idleness, nor the distractions of 
 a little holiday town in its season, could tempt Stowell from his 
 studies. His successes seemed lightly won, but Alick, who lodged 
 with him in Athol Street, knew that he was a hard worker. Hte 
 worked early and late as if inspired by a great hope, a great ideal. 
 
 His only recreation was to spend his week-ends at home. When 
 he arrived on the Saturday afternoons he usually found his father, 
 who was looking younger every day, humming to himself as he 
 
THE 8TVDENT-AT-LAW 43 
 
 worked in an old coat among the flowers in the conservatory. At 
 night they dined together, and after dinner, if the evenings were 
 cool, the Deemster would call on him to stir the peats and draw 
 up to the fire, and then the old man would talk. 
 
 It was wonderful talking, but nearly always on the same sub- 
 ject — the great Manx trials, the great crimes (often led up to by 
 great temptations), the great advocates and the great Deemsters. 
 Victor noticed that whatever the Deemster began with he usually 
 came round to the same conclusion — ^the power and sanctity of 
 Justice. After an hour, or more, he would rise in his stately way, 
 to go to the blue law-papers for his next Court which his clerk, 
 old Joshua Scarf, had laid out under the lamp on the library 
 table, saying: 
 
 " That's how it is, you see. Justice is the strongest and most 
 sacred thing in the world, and in the end it must prevail." 
 
 But Victor's greatest joy in his weekly visits to Ballamoar was 
 to light his candle at ten o'clock on the mahogany table on the 
 landing under the clock and fly off to his bedroom, for Janet would 
 be there at that hour, blowing up his fire, turning down his bed, 
 opening his bag to take out his night-gear and ready to talk on a 
 still greater subject. 
 
 With the clairvoyance of the heart of a woman who had never 
 had a lover of her own (" not exactly a real lover," she used to 
 say) she had penetrated the mystery of the change Ln Victor. She 
 loved to dream about the glories of his future career (even her 
 devotion to the Deemster was in danger of being eclipsed by that) 
 but above everything else, about the woman who was to be his wife. 
 
 In some deep womanlike way, unknown to man, she identified 
 herself with Fenella Stanley and courted Victor for her in her 
 absence. She had visions of their marriage day, and particularly 
 of the day after it, when they would come home, that lovely and 
 beloved pair, to this very house, this very room, this very bed, 
 and she would spread the sheets for them. 
 
 " Is that you, dear? " she would say, down on her knees at the 
 fire, as he came in with his candle. 
 
 And then he, too, would play his little part, asking about the 
 servants, the tenants, Robbie Creer, and his son Robin (now a big 
 fellow and the Deemster's coachman) and Alice and " Auntie 
 Kitty," and even the Manx cat with her six tailless kittens, and 
 then, as if casually, about Fenella. 
 
 " Any news from Miss Green lately, Janet? " 
 
 One night Janet had something better than news — a letter and 
 a photograph. 
 
 " There! What do you think of that, now? " 
 
44 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Victor read the letter in its bold, clear, unaffected handwrit- 
 ing, and then holding the photograph under the lamp in his trem- 
 bling fingers (Janet was sure they were trembling) he said, in a 
 voice that was also trembling: 
 
 " Don't you think she's like my mother — ^just a little like? " 
 
 " 'Deed she is, dear," said Janet. " You've put the very name 
 to it. And that's to say she's like the loveliest woman that ever 
 walked the world — ^in this island anyway." 
 
 Victor could never trust his voice too soon after Janet said 
 things like that (she was often saying them), but after a while he 
 laughed and answered : 
 
 " I notice she doesn't walk the island too often, though. She 
 hasn't come here for ages." 
 
 " 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. 
 
 Ill 
 
 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 ham 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 
 
THE 8TUDENT-AT-LAW 45 
 
 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. Yoimg 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 con- 
 cealed) he had done some'i,hing 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 some- 
 body 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. 
 
 He found the Deemster in the conservatory, re-potting gera- 
 niums, and when hd'feme up behind with a merry shout, his father 
 turned with glad eyes, a little moist, wiped his soiled fingers on his 
 old coat and shook hands with him (for the first time in his life) 
 saying, in a thick voice, 
 
 " Good — very good ! " 
 
 They dined together, as usual, and when they had drawn up at 
 opposite cheeks of the hearth, with the peat fire between them, the 
 Deemster talked as Victor thought he had never heard him 
 talk before. 
 
 It was the proper aspiration of every young advocate to become 
 a Judge, and there was no position of more dignity and authority. 
 Diplomatists, statesmen, prime ministers and even presidents might 
 be influenced in their conduct by fears or hopes, or questions of 
 policy, but the Judge alone of all men was free to do the right, as 
 God gave him to see the right, no matter if the sky should fall. 
 
 " But if the position of the Judge is high," said the Deemster, 
 " still higher is his responsibility. Woe to the Judge who permits 
 personal interests to pervert his judgment and thrice woe to him 
 who commits a crime against Justice." 
 
 Victor found it impossible to break in on that high theme with 
 mention of his personal matter, so, as soon as the clock on the land- 
 ing began to warn for ten he leapt up, snatched his candle, and flew 
 
46 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 off to his bedroom in the hope of talk of quite another kind 
 with Janet. 
 
 But Janet was not there, and neither* was his bed turned down 
 as usual, nor his night-gear laid out, nor his lamp lighted. He had 
 asked for her soon after his arrival and been told that she had gone 
 to her room early in the afternoon, and had not since been heard of. 
 
 " Headache," thought Victor, remembering that she was sub- 
 ject to this malady, and without more thought of the matter, he 
 tumbled into bed and fell asleep. 
 
 But the first sight that met his eyes when he opened them in the 
 morning was Janet, with a face dissolved in tears, and the tray in 
 her hand, asking him in a muffled voice to sit up to his breakfast. 
 
 "Lord alive, Janet, what's amiss?" he asked, but she only 
 shook her head and called on him to eat. 
 
 " Tell me what's happened," he said, but not a word would she 
 say until he had taken his breakfast. 
 
 He gulped down some of the food, under protest, Janet stand- 
 ing over him, and then came a tide of lamentation. 
 
 " God comfort you, my boy ! God strengthen and comfort 
 you! " said Janet. 
 
 In the whirl of his stunned senses, Victor caught at the first 
 subject of his thoughts. 
 
 " Is it about Fenella.^ " he asked, and Janet nodded and wiped 
 her eyes. 
 
 " Is she — dead ? " 
 
 Janet threw up her hands. " Thank the Lord, no, not that, 
 anyway." 
 
 "Is she ill?" 
 
 " Not that either." 
 
 " Then why make all this fuss ? What does it matter to me ? " 
 
 " It matters more to you than to anybody else in the world, 
 dear," said Janet. 
 
 Victor took her by the shoulders as she stood by his bed. " In 
 the name of goodness, Janet, what is it? " he said. 
 
 It came at last, a broken story, through many gusts of breath, 
 all pretences down between them now and their hearts naked 
 before each other. 
 
 Fenella Stanley, who, since she left Newnham, had been work- 
 ing (as he knew) as a voluntary assistant at some Women's Settle- 
 ment in London, had just been offered and had accepted' the posi- 
 tion of its resident Lady Warden, and signed on for seven years. 
 
 " Seven years, you say? " 
 
 " Seven years, dear." 
 
THE STUDENT-AT-LAW 47 
 
 The Governor had prayed and protested, saying he had only 
 one daughter, and asking if she meant that he was to live the rest 
 of his life alone, but FeneUa, who had written heart-breaking 
 letters, had held to her purpose. It was like taking the veil, like 
 going into a nunnery; the girl was lost to them, they had seen the 
 last of her. 
 
 " I had it all from Catherine Green," said Janet. 
 
 Willie Killip, the postman, had given her the letter just when 
 she was standing at the porch, looking down the Curragh lane for 
 Victor, and seeing him coming along with his high step and the 
 sunset behind him, swishing the heads off the cushags with his cane. 
 
 " I couldn't find it in my heart to teU you last night, and you 
 looking so happy, so I ran away to my room, and it's a sorrowful 
 woman I am to tell you this morning." 
 
 She knew it would be bitter hard to him — as hard as it must 
 have been to Jacob to serve seven years for Rachel and then lose 
 her, and that was the saddest story in the old Book, she thought. 
 
 " But we must bear it as well as we can, dear, and — who 
 knows ? — ^it may all be for the best some day." 
 
 Victor, resting on his elbow, had listened with mouth agape. 
 The flaming light which had crimsoned his sky for five long years, 
 sustaining him, inspiring him, had died out in an instant. For 
 some moments he did not speak, and in the intervals of Janet's 
 lamentations nothing was audible but the cry of some sea-gulls 
 who had come up from the sea, where a storm was rising. Then 
 he began to laugh. It was wild, unnatural laughter, beginning 
 thick in his throat and ending with a scream. 
 
 "Lord, what a joke!" he cried. "What a damned funny 
 joke ! " 
 
 But at the next moment he broke into a stifling sob, and fell 
 face down on to the pillow and soaked it with his tears. 
 
 Janet hung over him like a mother-bird over a broken nest, her 
 wrinkled face working hard with many emotions — sorrow for her 
 boy and even anger with Fenella. 
 
 " Aw, dear ! aw, dear ! " she moaned, " many a time I've wished 
 I had been your real mother, dear ; but never so much as now that 
 I might have a right to comfort you." 
 
 At that word, though sadly spoken, Victor raised hinjself from 
 his pillow, brushed his eyes fiercely and said, in a firm, decided 
 voice, 
 
 " That's all right, mother. I've been a fool. But it shall 
 never happen again — ^never ! " 
 
48 TEE MABTEB OF MAK 
 
 CHAPTER SIX 
 
 THE WORLD OF WOMAN 
 
 Victor Stowell spent his first two hours after Janet left him 
 in destroying everything which might remind him of Fenella. 
 Her picture, which Janet had framed and hung over his mantel- 
 piece, he put face-down in a drawer. The flowers she had placed 
 in front of it he flung out of the window. A box full of news- 
 paper cuttings and extracts from books dealing with the hardships 
 of the laws relating to women (the collection of five laborious 
 years) he stuffed into the grate and set fire to. 
 
 But having done all this he found he had done nothing. Only 
 once, since her childhood, had Fenella been to Ballajnoar, yet she 
 had left her ghost all over it. He could not sit on the piazza, or 
 walk down the sandy road to the sea, without being ripped and 
 raked by the thought of her. And sight of the turn of the drive 
 at which she had waved her hand, and turned the glory of her face 
 on him, was enough to make the bluest sky a blank. 
 
 For a long month he went about with a look too dark for so 
 yoimg a face and a step too heavy for so light a foot, blackening his 
 fate and his future. He never doubted that he had lost something 
 that could never be regained. Without blaming Fenella for so 
 much as a moment he felt humiliated and ashamed, and like a fool 
 who had built his house upon the sand. God, how hollow living 
 seemed! Life had lost its savour; eff"ort was useless and there 
 was nothing left in the world but dead-sea fruit. 
 
 How much the Deemster had learnt of his trouble he never 
 knew, but one night, as they drew up to the cheeks of the hearth 
 after dinner, he said: 
 
 " Victor, how would you like to go round the world ? Travel is 
 good for a young man. It helps him to get things into proportion." 
 
 Victor leapt at the prospect of escaping from Ballamoar, but 
 thought it seemly to say something about the expense. 
 
 " That needn't trouble you," said the Deemster, " and you 
 wouldn't be beholden to me either, for there is something I have 
 never told you." 
 
 His mother had had a fortune of her own, and the last act of 
 her sweet life had been to make it over to her new-bom son, at the 
 idiscretion of his father, signing her dear will a few minutes before 
 she died, against every prayer and protest, in the tragic and 
 unrecognizable handwriting of the dying. 
 
 " It was five hundred a year then," said the Deemster, " but 
 I've not touched it for twenty-four years, so it's nine hundred now." 
 
THE WORLD OF WOMAN 49 
 
 " That's water enough to his wheel, I'm thinking," said Dan 
 Baldromma, when he heard of it, and Casar Qualtrough was 
 known to say: 
 
 " It's a horse that'll drive him to glory or the devil, and I 
 belave in my heart I'm knowing which." 
 
 Two months later Victor Stowell was ready for his journey. 
 Alick Gell was to go with him — ^that gentleman having scrambled 
 through his examination and prevailed on his mother to prevail 
 on his father to permit him to follow Stowell. 
 
 " God's sake, woman," the Speaker had said again, " let him 
 go, and give him the allowance he asks for, and bother me no more 
 about him." 
 
 Turning westward the young travellers crossed the Atlantic; 
 stood in awe on the ship's deck at their first sight of the new world, 
 with its great statue of Liberty to guard its portals; passed over 
 the breathless American continent, where life scours and roars 
 through Time like a Neap tide on a shingly coast, casting up its 
 pebbles like spray; then through Japan, where it flows silent and 
 deep, like a mill race under adumbrous overgrowth; and so on 
 through China, India and Egypt and back through Europe. 
 
 It was a wonderful tour — to Gell like sitting in the bow of a 
 boat where the tumult of life was for ever smiting his face in 
 freshening waves; to Stowell (for the first months at least) like 
 sitting miserably in the stern, with only the backwash visible that 
 was carrying him away, with every heave of the sea, from some- 
 thing he had left and lost. 
 
 But before long Stowell's heavy spirit regained its wings. 
 Although he could not have admitted it even to himself without a 
 sense of self -betrayal, Fenella Stanley's face, in the throng of 
 other and nearer faces, became f ainte? day by day. There are no 
 more infallible physicians for the heart-wounds inflicted by women 
 than women themselves, and when a man is young, and in the first 
 short period of virginal manhood, the world is full of them. 
 
 So it came to pass that whatever else the young men saw that 
 was wonderful and marvellous' in the countries they passed 
 through, they were always seeing women's eyes to light and warm 
 them. And being handsome and winsome themselves their inter- 
 est was rewarded according to the conditions — sometimes with a 
 look, sometimes with a smile, and sometimes in the freer com- 
 munities, with a handful of confetti or a bunch of spring flowers 
 flung in their faces, or perhaps the tap of a light hand on 
 their shoulders. 
 
 Thus the thought of Fenella Stanley, steadily worn down in 
 Victor's mind, became more and more remote as time and distance 
 4 
 
50 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 separated them, until at length there were moments when it 
 seemed like a shadowy memory. 
 
 Stowell and Gell were two years away, and when they returned 
 home the old island seemed to them to have dwarfed and dwindled, 
 the very mountains looking small and squat, and the insular affairs, 
 which had once loomed large, to have become little, mean and 
 almost foolish. 
 
 " Now they'll get to work; you'll see they will," said Janet, 
 and for the first weeks it looked as if they would. 
 
 For the better prosecution of their profession, as well as to 
 remove the sense of rivalry, they took chambers in different towns, 
 Stowell in Old Post Office Place in Ramsey, and Gell in Preaching 
 House Lane in Douglas — two outer rooms each for offices and two 
 inner ones for residential apartments. 
 
 But having ordered their furniture and desks, inscribed their 
 names in brass on their door-posts (" VICTOE STOWELL, 
 Advocate "), engaged junior assistants to sit on high stools and 
 take the names of the clients who might call, and arranged for 
 sleeping-out housekeepers to attend to their domestic necessities 
 (Victor's was a comfortable elderly body, Mrs. Quayle, once a 
 servant of his mother's at Ballamoar, afterwards married to a 
 fisherman, and then left a widow, like so many of her class, when 
 our hungry sea had claimed her man), they made no attempt to 
 practise, being too well off to take the cases of petty larceny and 
 minor misdemeanour which usually fall to the High Bailiff's Court, 
 and nobody offering them the cases proper to the Deemster's. 
 
 Those were the days of Bar dinners (social functions much in 
 favour with our unbriefed advocates), and one such fimction was 
 held in honour of the returned travellers. At this dinner Stowell, 
 being the principal speaker, gave a racy account of the worlds they 
 had wandered through, not forgetting the world of women — the 
 sleepy daintiness of the Japanese, the warm comeliness of the 
 Italian, the vivacious loveliness of the French, and above all, the 
 frank splendour of the American women, with their free step, 
 their upturned faces and their conquering eyes. 
 
 That was felt by various young Manxmen to be a feast that 
 could be partaken of more than once, so a club was straightway 
 founded for the furtherance of such studies. It met once a week 
 at Mount Murray, an old house a few miles out of Douglas, in the 
 middle of a forest of oak and pine trees, now an inn, but formerly 
 the home of a branch of the Athols, when they were the Lords of 
 Man, and kept a swashbuckler court of half-pay officers who had 
 come to end their days on the island because the living and liquor 
 were cheap. 
 
THE WORLD OF WOMAIl 51 
 
 One room of this house, the dining-room, still remained as it 
 used to be when the old bloods routed and shouted there, though 
 its coat-of-arms was now discoloured by damp and its table was as 
 worm-eaten as their coffins must have been. And here it was that 
 the young bloods of the " EUan Vannin " (the Isle of Man) held 
 their weekly revel — riding out in the early evening on their hired 
 horses, twenty or thirty together, sitting late over their cups and 
 pipes, and (the last toast drunk and the last story told) breaking 
 up in the dark of the morning, stumbling out to the front, where a 
 line of lanterns would be lining the path, the horses champing the 
 gravel and the sleepy stable-boys chewing their quids to keep 
 themselves awake, and then leaping into their saddles, singing their 
 last song at the f uU bellows of their lungs in the wide clearing of 
 the firs to the wondering sky, and galloping home, like so many 
 Gilpins (as many of them as were sober enough to get there at the 
 same time as their mounts) and clattering up the steep and stony 
 streets of Douglas to the scandal of its awakened inhabitants. 
 
 Victor Stowell was president of the " Elian Vannin," and in 
 that character he made one contribution to its dare-devil jollity, 
 which terminated its existence and led to othier consequences more 
 material to this story. 
 
 II 
 
 In his heavy days at Ballamoar, before he went abroad, his 
 father's house had been like a dam to which the troubled waters of 
 the island flowed — the little jealousies and envies of the island 
 community, the bickerings of church and chapel, of town and 
 country, of town and town, not to speak of the darker maelstrom 
 of more unworthy quarrels. While the Deemster had moved 
 through all this with his calm dignity as the great mediator, the 
 great pacifier, Victor with his quick brain and wounded heart had 
 stood by, seeing all and saying nothing. But now, making a call 
 upon his memory, for the amusement of his fellow clubmen, out of 
 sheer high spirits and with no thought of evil, he composed a num- 
 ber of four-line " Limericks " on the big-wigs of the island. 
 
 Such scorching irony and biting satire had never been heard in 
 the island before. If any pompous or hypocritical person (by 
 preference a parson, a local preacher, a High Bailiif or a Key) 
 had a dark secret, which he would have given his soul's salvation 
 not to have disclosed, it was held up, under some thin disguise, to 
 withering ridicule. 
 
 A long series of these reckless lampoons Victor fired oiF weekly 
 over the worm-eaten table at Mount Murray, to the delirious de- 
 light of the clubmen, who, learning them by heart, carried them to 
 
62 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 their little world outside, with the result that they ran over the 
 island like a fiery cross and set the Manx people aroar with 
 laughter. 
 
 The good and the unco' good were scandalized, but the victims 
 were scarified. And to put an end to their enemy, and terminate 
 his hostilities, these latter, laying their heads together to tar him 
 with his own brush, found a hopeful agency to their hand in the 
 person of a good-looking young woman of doubtful reputation 
 called Fanny, who kept a house of questionable fame in the unlit 
 reaches of the harbour south of the bridge. 
 
 One early morning word went through the town like a searching 
 wind that Fanny's house had been raided by the police, in the 
 middle of the night, about the hour when the Clubmen usually 
 clattered back to Douglas. The raid had been intended to capture 
 Stowell, but had failed in its chief object — ^that young gentleman 
 having gone on, when some of his comrades had stopped, put up 
 his horse at his job-master's and proceeded to Gell's chambers 
 where he slept on his nights in town. Others of his company had 
 also escaped by means of a free fight, in which they had used their 
 hunting crops and the police their truncheons. But Alick GeU, 
 with his supernatural capacity for getting into a scrape, had been 
 arrested and carried off, with Fanny herself, to the Douglas 
 lock-up. 
 
 Next day these two were brought up in the Magistrate's Court, 
 which was presided over by his Worship the Colonel of the " Nun- 
 nery," a worthy and dignified man, to whom the turn of recent 
 events was shocking. The old Court-house was crowded with the 
 excited townspeople, and as many of the Clubmen were present as 
 dare show their bandaged heads out of their bedrooms. 
 
 When the case was called, and the two defendants entered the 
 dock, they made a grotesque and rather pitiful contrast — Gell in 
 his tall, slim, fair-haired gentlemanliness, and Fanny in her warm 
 fat comeliness, decked out in some gaudy finery which she had sent 
 home for, having been carried off in the night with streaming locks 
 and naked bosom. 
 
 In the place of the Attorney-General, the prosecutor was a 
 full-bodied, elderly advocate named Hudgeon, who had been the 
 subject of one of the most withering of the lampoons. He opened 
 with bitter severity, spoke of the case as the worst of the kind the 
 island had known ; referred to the " most unholy hour of the morn- 
 ing " which had lately been selected for scenes of unseemly riot; 
 said his " righteous indignation " was roused at such disgracefvd 
 doings, and finally hoped the Court would, for the credit of law- 
 yers " hereafter " make an example, " without respect of persons," 
 
TEE WORLD OF WOMAN 53 
 
 of the representative of a group of young roysterers, who were a 
 disgrace to the law, and had nothing better to do (so rumour and 
 report were saying) than to traduce the good names of their elders 
 and betters. 
 
 When he had examined the constables and closed his case it 
 looked as if Gell were in danger of Castle Rushen, and the conse- 
 quent wrecking of his career at the Bar, and that nothing was 
 before Fanny but banishment from the island, with such solace as 
 the bribe of her employers might bring her. 
 
 But then, to a rustle of whispering, Stowell, who was in wig 
 and gown for the first time, got up for the defence. It had been 
 expected that he would do so, and many old advocates who had 
 heard much of him, had left their offices, and filled the advocates' 
 box, to see for themselves what mettle he was made of. 
 
 They had not long to wait. In five minutes he had made such 
 play with his " learned friend's " " unholy hour of the morning," 
 " his righteous indignation " and his " hereafter " for lawyers 
 (not without reference to a traditional personage with horns and 
 a fork) that the merriment of the people in Court rose from a titter 
 to a roar, which the ushers were powerless to suppress. Again and 
 again the writhing prosecutor, with flaming face and foaming and 
 spluttering mouth, appealed in vain to the Bench, until at length, 
 getting no protection, and being lashed by a wit more cutting than 
 a whip, he gathered up his papers and, leaving the case to his 
 clerk, fled from the Court like an infuriated bat, saying he would 
 never again set foot in it. 
 
 Then Stowell, calling back the constables, confused them, made 
 them contradict themselves, and each other, and step down at last 
 like men whose brains had fallen into their boots. After that he 
 called Gell and caused him to look like a harmless innocent who 
 had strayed out of a sheepfold into a shambles. And finally he 
 called Fanny, and getting quickly on the woman's side of her, he 
 so coaxed and cajoled and flattered and then frightened her, that 
 she seemed to be on the point of blurting out the whole plot, and 
 giving away the names of half the big men in the island. 
 
 His Worship of the Nunnery closed up the case quickly, saying 
 " young men will be young men," but regretting that the eminent 
 talents exhibited in the defence were not being employed in the 
 service of the island. 
 
 The Court-house emptied to a babel of talking and a burst of 
 irrepressible laughter, and that was the end of the " EUan 
 Vannin." But the one inefi^aceable efi'ect of the incident, most 
 material to this story, was that Alick GeU, who was still as innocent 
 as the baby of a girl, had acquired a reputation for dark misdoings 
 
54 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 (especially with women) whereof anything might be expected in 
 the future. 
 
 After the insular newspapers had dwelt with becoming severity 
 on this aspect of the " distressing proceedings," the Speaker 
 walked over in full-bearded dignity to remonstrate with the 
 Deemster. 
 
 " Your son is dragging my lad down to the dirt," he said, " and 
 before long I shall not be able to show my face anywhere." 
 
 " What do you wish me to do, Mr. Speaker .'' " asked the 
 Deemster. 
 
 " Do? Do? I don't know what I want you to do," said 
 the Speaker. 
 
 " I thought you didn't," said the Deemster, and then the full- 
 bearded dignity disappeared. 
 
 Concerning Victor, although he had made the island laugh (the 
 shortest cut to popularity), opinions were widely divided. 
 
 " There's only the breadth of a hair between that young man 
 and a scoundrel," said Hudgeon, the advocate. 
 
 " Lave him rope and he'll hang himself," said Casar Qual- 
 trough, from behind his pipe in the smoking-room of the Keys. 
 
 " Clever ! Clever uncommon ! But you'll see, you'll see," said 
 the Speaker. 
 
 " I've not lost faith in that young fellow yet," said the Gover- 
 nor. " Some great fact will awaken a sense of responsibility and 
 make a man of him." 
 
 The great fact was not long in coming, but few could have 
 foreseen the source from which it came. 
 
 Ill 
 
 With the first breath of the first summer after their return to 
 the island Stowell and Gell went up into the glen to camp. They 
 had no tent ; two hammocks swung from neighbouring trees served 
 them for beds and the horizontal boughs of other trees for 
 wardrobes. 
 
 There, for a long month, amidst the scent of the honeysuckle, 
 the gorse and the heather, and the smell of the bracken and the 
 pine, they fished, they shot, they smoked, they talked. Late in the 
 evening, after they had rolled themselves into their hammocks, 
 they heard the murmiu-ing of the trees down the length of the glen, 
 like near and distant sea-waves, and saw, above the soaring pine- 
 trunks, the gleaming of the sky with its stars. As they shouted 
 their last " Good-night " to each other from the depths of their 
 swaying beds the dogs would be barking at Dan Baldromma's mill 
 
TEE WORLD OF WOMAN 55 
 
 at the bottom of the glen and the water would be plashing in the 
 topmost fall of it. And then night would come, perfect night, 
 and the sUence of unbroken sleep. 
 
 Awaking with the dawn they would see the last stars pale out 
 and hear the first birds begin to call; then the cock would crow at 
 old Will Skillicorne's croft on the " brough," the sheep would 
 bleat in the fields beyond, the squirrels would squeak in the 
 branches over their heads and the fish would leap in the river below. 
 And then, as the sun came striding down on them from the hill- 
 tops to the east, they would tumble out of their hammocks, strip 
 and plunge into the glen stream — ^the deep, round, blue dubs of it, 
 in which the glistening water would lash their bodies like a living 
 element. And then they would run up to the headland (still in 
 the state of nature) and race over the heather like wild horses in 
 the fresh and nipping air. 
 
 They were doing this one midsummer morning when they had 
 an embarrassing experience, which, in the devious ways of destiny, 
 was not to be without its results. Flying headlong down the naked 
 side of the glen (for sake of the faster run) they suddenly became 
 aware of somebody coming up. It was a young woman in a sun- 
 bonnet. She was driving four or five heifers to the mountain. 
 Swishing a twig in her hand and calling to her cattle, she was 
 making straight for their camping-place. 
 
 The young men looked around, but there was no escape on any 
 side, so down they went full length on their faces in the long grass 
 (how short !) and buried their noses in the earth. 
 
 In that position of blind helplessness, there was nothing to do 
 but wait until the girl and her cattle had passed, and hope to be 
 unobserved. They could hear the many feet of the heifers, the 
 flapping of their tails (the flies must be pestering them) and the 
 frequent calls of the girl. On she came, with a most deliberate 
 slowness, and her voice, which had been clear and sharp when she 
 was lower down the glen, seemed to them to have a gurgling note 
 in it as she came nearer to where they lay. 
 
 " Come out of that, you gawk, and get along, will you? " she 
 cried, and Victor could not be quite sure that it was only the cattle 
 she was calling to. 
 
 At one moment, when they thought the girl and the cattle must 
 be very close, there was a sickening silence, and then the young 
 men remembered their breeches which were hanging open over a 
 bough and their shirts which were dangling at the end of it. 
 
 " Get up, stupid! What are you lying there for? " cried the 
 girl, and then came another swish of the twig and a further thud- 
 ding of the feet of the heifers. 
 
56 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " The devil must be in that girl," thought Victor, and he would 
 have given something to look up, but dare not, so he lay still and 
 listened, telling himself that never before had two poor men been 
 in such an unfair and ridiculous predicament. 
 
 At length the feet of the cattle sounded faint over the rippling 
 of the river, and the girl's voice thin through the pattering of the 
 leaves. And then the two sons of Adam rose cautiously from the 
 grass, slithered down the glen-side and slipped into the essential 
 part of their garments. 
 
 Half-an-hour later, the lark being loud in the sky, and the world 
 astir and decent, they were cooking their breakfast (Gell holding 
 a frying-pan over a crackling gorse fire, and Stowell, in his Wel- 
 lington boots, striding about with a tea-pot) when they heard the 
 girl coming back. And being now encased in the close armour of 
 their clothes they felt that the offensive had changed its front and 
 stepped boldly forward to face her. 
 
 She was a strapping girl of three or four and twenty, full- 
 blooded and full-bosomed, with coal-black hair and gleaming black 
 eyes under her sun-bonnet, which was turned back from her fore- 
 head, showing a comely face of a fresh complexion, with eager 
 mouth and warm red lips. Her sleeves were rolled back above 
 her elbows, leaving her round arms bare and sun-brown; her 
 woollen petticoat was tucked up, at one side, into her waist, and as 
 she came swinging down the glen with a jaunty step, her hips 
 moved, with her whole body, to a rhythm of health and happiness. 
 
 "Attractive young person, eh?" said Victor. 
 
 But GeU, after a first glance, went back without a word to his 
 frying-pan, leaving his comrade, who was still carrying his tea- 
 pot, to meet the girl, who came on with an unconcerned and uncon- 
 scious air, humming to herself at intervals, as if totally unaware 
 of the presence of either of them. 
 
 " Nice morning, miss," said Victor, stepping out into the path. 
 
 The girl made a start of surprise, looked him over from head to 
 foot, glanced at his companion, whose face was to the fire, recog- 
 nised both, smiled and answered : 
 
 " Yes, Sir, nice, very nice." 
 
 Then followed a little fencing, which was intended by Victor 
 to find out if the girl had seen them. 
 
 Came up this way a while ago, didn't she? Aw, yes, she did, 
 to take last year's heifers to graze on the mountains. Seen 
 anything hereabouts — ^that is to say on the tops ? Aw, no, nothing 
 at all — had he? Well, yes, he thought he'd seen something run- 
 ning on the ridge just over the waterfall. 
 
THE WOBLD OF WOMAN 57 
 
 The girl gave him a deliberate glance from her dark eyes, then 
 dropped them demurely and said, with an innocent air, 
 
 " Must have been some of the young colts broken out of the 
 top field, I suppose." 
 
 " That's all right," thought Victor, not knowing the ways of 
 women though he thought himself so wise in them. 
 
 After that, feeling braver, he began to make play with the 
 girl, asking her how far she had come, and if she wouldn't be 
 lonesome going back without company. 
 
 She looked at him quizzically for a moment, and then said, with 
 her eyes full of merriment, 
 
 " What sort of company, sir? " 
 
 " Well, mine for instance," he answered. 
 
 She laughed, a fresh and merry laugh from her throat, and said, 
 
 " You daren't come home with me. Sir." 
 
 "Why daren't I?" 
 
 " You'd be afraid o£ father. He's not used of young meia 
 ' coming about the place, and he'd frighten the life out of you." 
 
 Victor put down his tea-pot and made a stride forward. 
 " Come on — where is he ? " 
 
 But the girl swung away, with another laugh, crying ovei 
 her shoulder, 
 
 " Aw, no, no, plaze, plaze ! " 
 
 " Ah, then it's you that are afraid, eh.' " said Victor. 
 
 " It's not that," replied the girl. 
 
 " What is it.? " said Victor. 
 
 She gave him another deliberate glance from her dark eyes — 
 he thought he could feel the warm glow of her body across the 
 distance dividing them — and said, 
 
 " The old man might be sending somebody else up with the 
 heifers next time, and then . . . . " 
 
 "What then?" 
 
 She laughed again with eyes full of mischief, and seemed to 
 prepare to fly. 
 
 " Then maybe I'd be missing seeing something," she said, and 
 shot away at a bound. 
 
 Victor stood for a moment looking down the glen. 
 ' " God, what a girl! " he said. " I've a good mind to go after 
 
 her." 
 * "I shouldn't if I were you," said Gell. " You know who 
 S«»she is?" 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " Bessie CoUister." 
 
 " The little thing who was in Castletown ? " 
 
58 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then I suppose she belongs to you? " 
 
 " Not a bit. I haven't spoken to her from that day to this," 
 said Gell, and then he told of the promise he had made to his father. 
 
 " But Lord alive, that was when you were a lad." 
 
 " Maybe so, but ' as long as you live ' — ^that was the word, and 
 I mean to keep it. Besides, there's Dan Baldromma." 
 
 " That blatherskite? " said Victor. 
 
 " He'd be an ugly customer if anything went wrong, yon 
 know." 
 
 " But, good Lord, man, what is going to go wrong? " 
 
 When they had finished breakfast and Gell was washing up at 
 the water's edge, Victor was on a boulder, looking down the glen 
 again, and saying, as if to himself, 
 
 " My God, what a girl, though ! Such lips, such flesh, 
 such . . . . " 
 
 " I say, old fellow ! " cried Gell. 
 
 Victor leapt down and laughed to cover his confusion. 
 
 " Well, why not ? We're all creatures of earth, aren't we ? " 
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 THE DAY OP TEMPTATION 
 
 Fenella Stanley had been two and a half years at the head 
 of the Women's Settlement. Her work as Lady Warden had been 
 successful. It had been a great, human, palpitating experience. 
 There were days, and even weeks, when she felt that it had brought 
 her a little nearer to the soul of the universe and helped her to 
 touch hands across the ages with the great women who had walked 
 through Gethsemane for the poor, despoiled and despairing vic- 
 tims of their own sex. 
 
 But nevertheless it had left her with a certain restlessness 
 which at first she found it hard to understand. Only little by 
 little did she come to realise that nature, with its almighty voice, 
 was calling to her, and that under aU the thrill of self-sacrifice she 
 was sufi"ering from the gnawing hunger of an underfed heart. 
 
 The seven years that had passed since her last visit to the island 
 had produced their physical efi"ects. From a slim and beautiful 
 school-girl she had developed into a full and splendid woman. 
 When the ladies of her Committee (matrons chiefly) saw the swing 
 of her free step and the imtamed glance of her eye they would say, 
 
 " She's a fine worker, but we shall never be able to keep her^— 
 you'll see we shall not." 
 
TBE DAY OF TEMPTATION 59 
 
 And as often as the men of the Committee (clergymen gener- 
 ally, but manly persons, for the most part, not too remote from 
 the facts of life) came within range of the glow and flame of her 
 womanhood, they would think, 
 
 " That splendid girl ought to become the mother of children." 
 
 During the first year of her wardenship her chief touch with 
 home (her father being estranged) had been through correspond- 
 ence with his housekeeper. Miss Green's leters were principally 
 about the Governor, but they contained a good deal about Victor 
 Stowell also. Victor had been called to the Bar, but for some 
 reason which nobody could fathom he seemed to have lost heart 
 and hope and the Deemster had sent him round the world. 
 
 Fenella found herself tingling with a kind of secret joy at this 
 news. She was utterly ashamed of the impulse to smile at the 
 thought of Victor's sufferings, yet do what she would she could 
 not conquer it. 
 
 Her tours abroad with her father had ceased by this time, but 
 in her second year at the Settlement she took holiday with a girl 
 friend, going through Switzerland and Italy and as far afield as 
 Egypt. During that journey fate played some tantalizing pranks 
 with her. 
 
 The first of them was at Cairo, where, going into Cook's, to 
 enter her name for a passage to Italy, her breath was almost 
 smitten out of her body by the sight of Victor's name, in his own 
 bold handwriting, in the book above her own — ^he had that day 
 sailed for Naples. 
 
 The second was at Naples itself (she would have died rather 
 than admit to herself that she was following him), where she saw 
 his name again, with Alick Gell's, in the Visitors' List, and being 
 a young woman of independent character, marched up to his hotel 
 to ask for him — ^he had gone on to Rome. 
 
 The third, and most trying, was in the railway station at 
 Zurich, where stepping out of the train from Florence she collided 
 on the crowded platform with the Attorney-General and his com- 
 fortable old wife from the Isle of Man, and was told that young 
 Stowell and young Gell had that moment left by train for Paris. 
 
 But back in London she found her correspondence with Miss 
 Green even more intoxicating than before, and every new letter 
 seemed like a hawser drawing her home. Victor Stowell had 
 returned to the island, but he was not showing much sign of set- 
 tling to work. He seemed to have no aim, no object, no ambition. 
 In fact it was the common opinion that the young man was going 
 steadily to the dogs. 
 
 " So if you ever had any thoughts in that direction, dear," said 
 
60 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Miss Green, " what a lucky escape you had (though we didn't 
 think so at the time) when you signed on at the Settlement ! " 
 
 But the conquering pull of the hawser that was dragging her 
 home came in the letters of Isabella GeU, with whom she had 
 always kept up a desultory correspondence. 
 
 The Deemster was failing fast (" and no wonder ! ") ; and 
 Janet Curphey, who had been such a bustling body, was always 
 falling asleep over her needles; and the Speaker (after a violent 
 altercation in the Keys) had had a profuse bleeding at the nose, 
 which Dr. Clucas said was to be taken as a warning. 
 
 But the only exciting news in the island just now was about 
 Victor Stowell. Really, he was becoming impossible! Not con- 
 tent with making her brother Alick the scapegoat of his own mis- 
 doings in a disgraceful affair of some sort (her father had forbid- 
 den Alick the house ever since, and her mother was always moping 
 with her feet inside the fender), he was behaving scandalously. 
 A good-looking woman couldn't pass him on the road without his 
 eyes following her ! Any common thing out of a thatched cottage, 
 if she only had a pretty face, was good enough for him now ! ! The 
 simpletons ! ! Perhaps they expected him to marry them, and give 
 them his name and position.'' But not he!! Indeed no!! And 
 heaven pity the poor girl of a better class who ever took him for 
 a husband ! ! ! 
 
 Fenella laughed — seeing through the feminine spitefulness of 
 these letters as the sun sees through glass. So mistress Isabella 
 herself had been casting eyes in that direction ! What fun ! She 
 had visions of the GeU girls having differences among themselves 
 about Victor Stowell. The idea of his marrying any of them, and 
 keeping step for the rest of his life with the conventions of the 
 GeU family, was too funny for anything. 
 
 But those Manx country girls, with their black eyes and eager 
 mouths, were quite a different proposition. Fenella had visions 
 of them also, fresh as milk and warm as young heifers, watching 
 for Victor at their dairy doors or from the shade of the apple trees 
 in their orchards, and before she was aware of what was happening 
 to her she was aflame with jealousy. 
 
 That Isabella GeU was a dunce ! It was nonsense to say that 
 the Manx country girls out of the thatched cottages expected Victor 
 to marry them. Of course they didn't, and neither did they want 
 his name or his position. What they really wanted was Victor 
 himself, to flirt with and flatter them and make love to them, per- 
 haps. But good gracious, what a shocking thing! That should 
 never happen — never while she was about! 
 
 Of course this meant that she must go back to save Victor. 
 
THE DAY OF TEMPTATION 61 
 
 Naturally she could not expect to do so over a blind distance of 
 three hundred miles, while those Manx country girls in their new 
 Whitsuntide hats were shooting glances at him every Sunday in 
 Church, or perhaps hanging about for him on week-evenings, in 
 their wicked sun-bonnets, «nd even putting up their chins to be 
 kissed in those shady lanes at the back of Ballamoar, when the 
 sun would be softening, and the wood-pigeons would be cooing, 
 and things would be coming together for the night. 
 
 That settled matters ! Her womanhood was awake by this 
 time. Seven years of self-sacrifice had not been sufficient to quell 
 it. After a certain struggle, and perhaps a certain shame, she put 
 in her resignation. 
 
 Her Committee did not express as much surprise as she had 
 expected. The ladies hoped her native island would provide a 
 little world, a little microcosm, in which she could still carry on 
 her work for women, (she had given that as one of her excuses), 
 and the gentlemen had no doubt her father, " and others," would 
 receive her back " with open arms." 
 
 She was to leave the Settlement at the close of the half year, 
 that is to say at the end of July, but she decided to say nothing, 
 either to her father or to Miss Green, about her return to the 
 island until the time came for it at the beginning of August. 
 
 She was thinking of Victor again, and cherishing a secret hope 
 of taking him unawares somewhere — of giving him another sur- 
 prise, such as she gave him that day in the glen, when he came 
 down bareheaded, with the sea wind in his dark hair, and then 
 stopped suddenly at the sight of her, with that entrancing look of 
 surprise and wonder. 
 
 And if any of those Manx country girls were about him when 
 that happened .... Well, they would disappear like a shot. 
 Of course they would ! 
 
 II 
 
 Meantime, another woman was hearing black stories about 
 Victor, and that was Janet. She believed them, she disbelieved 
 them, she dreaded them as possibilities and resented them as 
 slanders. But finally she concluded that, whether they were true 
 or false, she must tell Victor all about them. 
 
 Yet how was she to do so? How put a name to the evil things 
 that were being said of him — she who had been the same as a 
 mother to him all the way up since he was a child, and' held him 
 in her arms for his christening.'' 
 
 For weeks her soft heart fought with her maidenly modesty, 
 but at length her heart prevailed. She could not see her dear boy 
 
62 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 walk blindfold into danger. Whatever the consequences she must 
 speak to him, warn him, stop him if necessary. 
 
 But where and when and how was she to do so? To write 
 was impossible (nobody knew what might become of a letter) and 
 Victor had long discontinued his week-end visits to Ballamoar. 
 
 One day the Deemster told her to prepare a room for the 
 Governor who was coming to visit him, and seizing her oppor- 
 tunity she said, 
 
 " And wouldn't it be nice to ask Victor to meet him, your 
 Honour.? " 
 
 The Deemster paused for a moment, then bowed his head and 
 answered, 
 
 " Do as you please. Miss Curphey." 
 
 Five minutes afterwards Janet was writing in hot haste 
 to Ramsey. 
 
 " He is to come on Saturday, dear, but mind you come on 
 Friday, so that I may have you all to myself for a while before 
 the great men take you from me." 
 
 Victor came on Friday evening and found Janet alone, the 
 Deemster being away for an important Court and likely to sleep 
 the night in Douglas. She was in her own little sitting-room — a 
 soft, cushiony chamber full of embroidered screens and pictures 
 of himself as a child worked out in coloured silk. A tea-tray, ready 
 laid, was on a table by her side, and she rose with a trembling 
 cry as he bounded in and kissed her. 
 
 Tea was a long but tremulous j oy to her, and by the time it was 
 over the darkness was gathering. The maid removed the tray and 
 was about to bring in a lamp, but Janet, being artful, said: 
 
 " No, Jane, not yet. It would be a pity to shut out this lovely 
 twilight. Don't you think so, dear? " 
 
 Victor agreed, not knowing what was coming, and for an hour 
 longer they sat at opposite sides of the table, with their faces to 
 the lawn, while the rooks cawed out their last congress, and the 
 thrush sang its last song, and Janet talked on indifferent matters — 
 whether Mrs. Quayle (his sleeping-out housekeeper) was making 
 him comfortable at Ramsey, and if Robbie Creer should not be told 
 to leave butter and fresh eggs for him on market-day. 
 
 But when, the darkness having deepened, there was no longer 
 any danger that Victor could see her face, Janet (trembling with 
 fear of her nursling now that he had grown to be a man) plunged 
 into her tragic subject. 
 
 People were talking and talking. The Manx ones were terrible 
 for talking. Really, it ought to be possible to put the law on 
 people who talked and talked. 
 
TEE DAY OF TEMPTATION 63 
 
 " Who are they talking about nowj Janet? Is it about me? " 
 said Victor. 
 
 " Well, yes .... yes, it's about you, dear." 
 
 Oh, nothing serious, not to say serious! Just a few flighty 
 girls boasting about the attentions he was paying them. And then 
 older people, who ought to know better, gibble-gabbling about the 
 dangers to young women — as if the dangers to young men were 
 not greater, sometimes far greater. 
 
 " Not that I don't sympathise with the girls," said Janet, 
 " living here, poor things, on this sandy headland, while the best 
 of the Manx boys are going away to America, year after year, and 
 never a man creature younger than their fathers and grandfathers 
 about to pass the time of day with, except the heavy-footed 
 omathauns that axe left." 
 
 What wonder that when a young man of another sort came 
 about, and showed them the courtesy a man always shows to a 
 woman, whatever she is, when he is a gentleman borij — just a 
 smile, or a nod, or a kind word on the road, or the lifting of his 
 hat, or a hand over a stile perhaps — what wonder if the poor fool- 
 ish young things began to dream dreams and see visions. 
 
 " But that's just where the danger comes in, dear," said Janet. 
 " Oh, I'm a woman myself, and I was young once, you know, and 
 perhaps I remember how the heavens seem to open for a girl 
 w'hen she thinks two eyes look at her with love, and she feels as if 
 she could give herself away, with everything she is or will be, and 
 care nothing for the future. But only think what a terrible thing 
 it would be if some simple girl of that sort got into trouble on 
 your account." 
 
 " Don't be afraid of that, Janet," said Victor in a low voice. 
 " No girl in the island, or in the world either, has ever come to 
 any harm through me — or ever will do." 
 
 There came the sound of a faint gasp in the darkness, and then 
 Janet cried : 
 
 " God bless you for saying that, dear ! I knew you would ! 
 And don't think your silly old Janet believed the lying stories they 
 told of you. 'Deed no, that she didn't and never will do, never! 
 But all the same a young man can't be too careful ! " 
 
 There were bad girls about also — ^real scheming, designing huz- 
 zies! Some of them were good-looking young vixens too, for it 
 wasn't the good ones only that God made beautiful. And when 
 a man was young and handsome and clever and charming and 
 well-off and had all the world before him, they threw themselves in 
 his way, and didn't mind what disgrace they got into if they could 
 only compel him to marry them. 
 
64 THE MASTER OP MAN 
 
 " But think of a slut like that coming to live as mistress here — 
 here in the house of Isobel Stowell ! " 
 
 Then the men folk of such -women were as bad as they were. 
 There was a wicked, lying, evil spirit abroad these days that Jack 
 was as good as his master, and if you were up you had to be pulled 
 down, and if you were big you had to be made little. 
 
 " Only think what a cry these people would make if anything 
 happened," said Janet, " wrecking your career perhaps, and mak- 
 ^ing promotion impossible." 
 
 " Don't be afraid of that either, Janet. I can take care of 
 myself, you know." 
 
 " So you can, dear," said Janet, " but then think of your 
 father. Forty years a judge, and not a breath of scandal has ever 
 touched him ! But that's just why some of these dirts would like to 
 destroy him, calling to him in the Courts themselves, perhaps, with 
 all the dirty tongues at them, to come down from the judgment- 
 seat and set his own house in order." 
 
 " My father can take care of himself, too, Janet," said Victor. 
 
 " I know, dear, I know," said Janet. " But think what he'll 
 suffer if any sort of trouble falls on his son ! More, far more, than 
 if it fell on himself. That's the way with fathers, isn't it? 
 Always has been, I suppose, since the days of David. Do you 
 remember his lamentations over his son Absalom? I declare I feel 
 fit enough to cry in Church itself whenever the Vicar reads it: ' O 
 my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, 
 my son, my son.' " 
 
 There was silence for a moment, for Victor found it diiEcult 
 to speak, and then Janet began to plead with him in the name 
 of his family also. 
 
 " The Deemster is seventy years old now," she said, " and he 
 has four hundred years of the Ballamoars behind him, and there 
 has never been a stain on the name of any of them. That's always 
 been a kind of religion in your family, hasn't it — ^that if a man 
 belongs to the breed of the Ballamoars he vrill do the right — ^he can 
 be trusted? That's something to be born to, isn't it? It seems to 
 me it is more worth having than all the jewels and gold and titles 
 and honours the world has in it. Oh, my dear, my dear, you know 
 what your father is; he'll say nothing, and you haven't a mother 
 to speak to you ; so don't be vexed with your old Janet who loves 
 you, and would die for you, if she could save you from trouble and 
 disgrace; but think what a terrible, fearful, shocking thing it 
 would be for you, and for your father, and for your family, and 
 .... yes, for the island itself if anything should happen now." 
 
 " Nothing shall happen — I give you my word for that, Janet," 
 said Victor. 
 
TME DAY OF TEMPTATION 65 
 
 " God bless you ! " said Janet, and rising and reaching over in 
 the darkness she kissed him — her face was wet. 
 
 After that she laughed, in a nervous way, and said she wasn't 
 a Puritan either, like some of the people in those parts whom she 
 saw on Simday mornings, walking from chapel in their chapel 
 hats, after preaching and praying against " carnal transgression " 
 and " bodily indulgence " and " givjng way to the temptations of 
 the flesh " — as if they hadn't as many children at home as there 
 were chickens in a good-sized hen-roost. 
 
 " Young men are young men and girls are girls," said Janet, 
 " and some of these Manx girls are that pretty and smart that they 
 are enough to tempt a saint. And if David was tempted by the 
 beauty of Bathsheba — and we're told he was a man after God's 
 own 'heart — ^what better can the Lord expect of poor lads these 
 days who are making no such pretensions ? " 
 
 She was only an old maid herself, but she supposed it was 
 natural for a young man to be tempted by the beauty of a young 
 woman, or the Lord wouldn't have allowed it to go on so long. But 
 the moral of that was that it was better for a man to marry. 
 
 " So find a good woman and marry her, dear. The Deeinster 
 will be delighted, having only yourself to follow him yet. And as 
 for you," she added (her voice was breaking again), " you may not 
 think it now, being so young and strong, but when you are as old 
 as I am .... and feeling feebler every year .... and you are 
 looking to the dark day that is coming .... and no one of your 
 own to close your eyes for you .... only hired servants, or 
 strangers, perhaps . . . . " 
 
 It was Victor's turn to rise now, and to stop her speaking by 
 taking her in his arms. After a moment, not without a tremor in 
 his own voice also, he said, 
 
 " I shall never marry, and you know why, Janet. But neither 
 will I bring shame on my father, or stain my name, as God is my 
 help and witness." 
 
 The rooks were silent in the elms by this time, but the gong 
 was sounding in the hall, so, laughing and crying together, and 
 with all her trouble gone like chased clouds, Janet ran off to her 
 room to wipe her eyes and fix her cap before showing her face 
 at supper. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Next morning the Deemster returned from Douglas, and in the 
 afternoon, the Governor arrived. They took tea on the piazza, the 
 days being long and the evenings warm. 
 5 
 
66 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 The Deemster was uneasy about the case they had tried the day 
 before, and talked much about it. A farmer had killed a girl on 
 his farm after every appearance of gross ill-usage. The crime and 
 the motive had been clear and therefore the law could show no 
 clemency. But there had been external circumstances which might 
 have affected the man's conduct. Down to ten years before he had 
 been a right-living man, clean and sober and honest and even 
 religious. Then he had been thrown by a young horse and kicked 
 on the head and had had to undergo an operation. After he came 
 out of the hospital his whole character was found to have changed. 
 He had become drunken, dishonest, a sensualist and a foul- 
 mouthed blasphemer, and finally he had committed the crime for 
 which he now stood condemned. 
 
 " It makes me tremble to think of it," said the Deemster, " that 
 a mere physical accident, a mere chance, or a mere spasm of animal 
 instinct, may cause any of us at any time to act in a way that is 
 utterly contrary to our moral character and most sincere 
 resolutions." 
 
 " It's true, though," said the Governor, " and it doesn't require 
 the kick of a horse to make a man act in opposition to his character. 
 The loudest voice a man hears is the call of his physical nature, and 
 law and religion have just got to make up their minds to it." 
 
 Next morning, Sunday naorning, they went to church. Janet 
 drove in the carriage by way of the high road, but the three men 
 walked down the grassy lane at the back, which, with its gorse 
 hedges on either side, looked like a long green picture in a golden 
 frame. The Deemster, who walked between the Governor and 
 Victor, was more than usually bent and solemn. He had had an 
 anonymous letter about his son that morning — ^he had lately had 
 shoals of them. 
 
 The morning was warm and quiet ; the clover fields were sleep- 
 ing in the sunlight to the lullaby of the bees; the slumberous 
 mountains behind were hidden in a palpitating haze, and against 
 the broad stretch of the empty sea in front stood the gaunt square 
 tower from which the far-off sound of the church bells was coming. 
 
 Nowhere in the island could they have found a more tragic 
 illustration of the law of life they had talked about the evening 
 before than in the person of the Vicar of the Church they were 
 going to. 
 
 His name was Cowley, and down to middle life he had been all 
 that a clergyman should be. But then he had lost a son under 
 circumstances of tragic sorrow. The boy had been threatened 
 with a consumption, so the father had sent him to sea, and going 
 to town to meet him on his return to the island, he had met his body 
 
TEE DAY OF TEMPTATION 67 
 
 instead, as it was being brought ashore from his ship, which was 
 lying at anchor in the bay. 
 
 The sailors had said that at sight of them and their burthen. 
 Parson Cowley had fallen to the stones of Ramsey harbour like a 
 dead man, and it was long before they could bring him to, or 
 staunch the wound on his forehead. AVhat is certain is that after 
 his recovery he began to drink, and that for fifteen years he had 
 been an inveterate drunkard. 
 
 This had long been a cause of grief and perhaps of shame to 
 his parishioners ; but it had never lessened their love of him, for 
 they knew that in all else he was stiU a true Christian. If any 
 lone " widow man " lay dying in his mud cabin on the Curragh, 
 Parson Cowley would be there to sit up all the night through with 
 him; and if any barefooted children were going to bed hungry in 
 the one-roomed hovel that was their living-room, sleeping-room, 
 birth-room and death-room combined. Parson Cowley would be seen 
 carrying them the supper from his own larder. 
 
 But his weakness had become woeful, and after a shocking 
 moment in which he had staggered and fallen before the altar, a 
 new Bishop, who knew nothing of the origin of his infirmity, and 
 was only conscious of the scandal of it, had threatened that if 
 the like scene ever occurred again he would not only forbid him 
 to exercise his ofiice, but call upon the Governor (in whose gift it 
 was) to remove him from his living. 
 
 The bells were loud when the three men reached the white- 
 washed church on the clifi", with the sea singing on the beach below 
 it, and' lUiam Christian, the shoemaker and parish clerk, standing 
 bareheaded at the bottom of the outside steps to the tower to give 
 warning to the bell-ringers that the Governor had arrived. 
 
 In expectation of his visit the church was crowded, and with 
 Victor going first to show the way, the Governor next, and the 
 Deemster last, with his white head down, the company from Balla- 
 moar walked up the aisle to the family pew, in which Janet, in her 
 black silk mantle, was already seated. 
 
 The Deemster's pew was close to the communion rails, and 
 horizontal to the church with the reading-desk and pulpit in the 
 open space in front of it, and a marble tablet on the wall behind, 
 containing the names of a long line of the BaUamoars, going as 
 far back as the sixteenth century. 
 
 The vestry was at the western end of the church, under the 
 tower, and as soon as the bells stopped and the clergy came out, 
 it was seen that the Vicar was far from sober. Nevertheless he 
 kept himself erect while coming through the church behind his 
 
«8 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 choir and curate, and tottered into the carved chair within the 
 rail of the communion. 
 
 The curate took the prayers, and might have taken the rest of 
 the service also, but the Vicar, thinking his duty compelled him to 
 take his part in the presence of the Governor, rose to read the les- 
 sons. With difficulty he reached the reading-desk, which was close 
 to the Deemster's pew, and opened the Book and gave out the place. 
 But hardly had he begun, in a husky and indistinct voice, with 
 " Here beginneth the first chapter of the Second Book of Samuel " 
 (for it was the sixth Sunday after Trinity) when he stopped as if 
 unable to go farther. 
 
 For a moment he fumbled with his spectacles, taking them off 
 and wiping them on the sleeve of his surplice, and then he began 
 afresh. But scarcely had he said, in a still thicker voice, " Now it 
 came to pass " . . . . when he stopped again, as if the words of 
 the Book before him had run into each other and become an 
 unreadable jumble. 
 
 After that he looked helplessly about him for an instant, as if 
 wondering what to do. Then he grasped the reading-desk with his 
 two trembling hands, and the perspiration was seen to be breaking 
 in beads from his forehead. 
 
 A breathless silence passed over the church. The congre- 
 gation saw what was happening, and dropped their heads, as if 
 knowing that for their beloved old Vicar this (before the eyes of 
 the Governor) was the end of everything. 
 
 But suddenly they became aware that something was happen- 
 ing. Quietly, noiselessly, almost before they were conscious of 
 what he was doing, Victor Stowell, who had been sitting at the end 
 of the Deemster's pew, had risen, stepped across to tlie reading- 
 desk, put a soft hand on the Vicar's arm, and was reading the 
 lesson for him. 
 
 " Saul and Jonathan mere lovely and pleasant in their live*, 
 and in their death they mere not divided . . . . I am dis- 
 tressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; thy love to me mas 
 wonderful, passing the love of momen." 
 
 People who were there that morning said afterwards that never 
 before had the sublime lament of the great King, the great warrior 
 and the great poet, for his dead friend and dead enemy been read 
 as it was read that day by the young voice, so rich and resonant, 
 that was ringing through the old church. 
 
 But it was not that alone that was welling through every bosom. 
 It was the thrilling certainty that out of the greatness of his heart 
 
TEE CALL OF BESSIE COLLISTER 69 
 
 the son of the Deemster (of whom too many of them had been 
 talking ill) had covered the nakedness of the poor stricken sinner 
 who had sunk back in his surplice to a seat behind him. 
 
 When the service was over, and the clergy had returned to the 
 vestry, the congregation remained standing until the Governor had 
 left the church. But nobody looked at him now, for all eyes were 
 on the two who followed him — the Deemster and Victor. 
 
 The Deemster had taken his son's arm as he stepped out of his 
 pew, and as he walked down the aisle, through the lines of his 
 people, his head was up and his eyes were shining. 
 
 " Did thou see that, Mistress ? " said Robbie Creer, in triumph- 
 ant tones to Janet Curphey, as she was stepping back, with a 
 beaming face, into her carriage at the gate. 
 
 " Thou need have no fear of thy lad, I tell thee. The Balla- 
 moar will out! " 
 
 But the day of temptation was coming, and too soon it came. 
 
 CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 THE CALL OF BESSIE COLLISTER 
 
 It was the first Saturday in August, when the throbbing and 
 thunging of the vast machinery of the mills and factories of the 
 English industrial counties comes to a temporary stop, and for 
 three days at least, tens of thousands of its servers, "male and 
 female, pour into the island for health and holiday. 
 
 Stowell and Gell had never yet seen the inrushing of the liber- 
 ated ones, so with no other thought, and little thinking what fierce 
 game fate was playing with them, they had come into Douglas that 
 day, in flannels and straw hats, in eager spirits and with high 
 steps, to look on its .sights and scenes. 
 
 It was late afternoon, and they made first for the pier, where a 
 crowd of people had already assembled' to witness the arrival of 
 an incoming steamer. 
 
 She was densely crowded. Every inch of her deck seemed to 
 be packed with passengers, chiefly young girls, as the young men 
 thought, some of them handsome, many of them pretty, all of them 
 comely. With sparkling eyes and laughing mouths they shouted 
 their salutations to their friends on the pier, while they untied the 
 handkerchiefs which they had bound about their heads to keep 
 down their hair in the breeze on the sea, and' pinned on their hats 
 before landing. 
 
 The young men found the scene delightful. A little crude, 
 perhaps a little common, even a little coarse, but still delightful. 
 
70 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Then they walked along the promenade, and that, too, was 
 crowded. From the water's edge to the round hill-tops at the back 
 of the town, every thoroughfare seemed to be thrilling with j oyous 
 activity. Hackney carriages, piled high with luggage and higher 
 still with passengers, were sweeping round the curve of the bay; 
 windows and doors were open and filled with faces, and the whole 
 sea- front, from end to end, seemed to be as full of women's eyes as 
 a midnight sky of stars. 
 
 For tea they went up to Castle Mona — a grave-looking man- 
 sion in the middle of the bay, built for a royal residence by one of 
 the Earls of Derby when they were lords of Man before the 
 Athols, but now declined to the condition of an hotel for English 
 visitors, with its wooded slopes to the sea (wherein more than one 
 of our old Manx Kings may have pondered the problems of his 
 island kingdom), transformed into a public tea-garden, on which 
 pretty women were sitting under coloured sunshades and a string 
 band from London was playing the latest airs from Paris. 
 
 The young men took a table at the seaward end of the lawn, 
 with the rowing boats skimming the fringe of the water in front, 
 the white yachts scudding across the breast of the bay, the brown- 
 sailed luggers dropping out of the harbour with the first flood of 
 the flowing tide ; and then the human tide of j oyous life running 
 fast on the promenade below — girls chiefly, as they thought, 
 usually in white frocks, white stockings and white shoes, skipping 
 along like human daisy-chains with their arms entwined about each 
 other's waists, and sometimes turning their heads over their shoul- 
 ders to look up at them and laugh. 
 
 The sun went down behind the hills at the back of the town, 
 the string band stopped, the coloured sunshades disappeared, the 
 gong was sounded from the hall of the hotel and they went indoors 
 for dinner. 
 
 They sat by an open window of the stately dining-room 
 (wherein our old Earls and their Countesses once kept court), and 
 being in higher spirits than ever by this time, they ate of every 
 dish that was put before them, drank a bottle of champagne, 
 toasted each other and every pretty woman they could remember of 
 the many they had seen that day (" Here's to that fine girl with the 
 black eyes who was standing by the funnel "), and looked at 
 intervals at the scenes outside until the light failed and the dark- 
 ness claimed them. 
 
 At one moment they saw the dark hull of another steamer, lit 
 up in every port-hole, gliding towards the pier, and at the next 
 (or what seemed like the next), shooting across the white sheet 
 
THE CALL OF BE88IE COLLIBTER 71 
 
 of light from the uncovered windows of their dining-room, a large 
 blue landau, drawn by a pair of Irish bays, driven by a liveried 
 coachman. Gell leapt up to look at it. 
 
 " Vic," he cried, " I think that must be the Governor's 
 carriage." 
 
 " It is," said Stowell. 
 
 " And that's the Governor himself inside of it." 
 
 " No doubt." 
 
 " And the lady sitting beside him is ... . yes, no ... . yes 
 upon my soul I believe it was his daughter." 
 
 " Impossible," said Stowell, and, remembering what Janet had 
 told him, he thought no more of the matter. 
 
 They returned to the lawn to smoke after dinner, and then the 
 sky was dark and the stars had begun to appear; the tide was up 
 but the sea was silent; the rowing-boats were lying on the shingle 
 of the beach ; the yachts were at anchor in the bay ; the last of the 
 fishing-boats, each with a lamp in its binnacle, were doubling the 
 black brow of the head, and from the farthest rock of it the 
 revolving light in the lighthouse was sweeping the darkness from 
 the face of the town as with an illuminated fan. The young 
 men were enraptured. It was wonderful! It was enchanting! 
 It was like walking on the terrace at Monte Carlo ! 
 
 Then suddenly, as at the striking of a clock, the tovni itself 
 began to flame. One by one the fa9ades of the theatres and 
 dancing palaces that lined the front were lit up by electricity. It 
 raced along like ignited gimpowder and in a few minutes the broad 
 curve of the bay from headland to headland, was sparkling and 
 blazing imder ten thousand lights. 
 
 It was now the beginning of night in the little gay town. The 
 young men could hear the creak of the iron turn-stile to one of the 
 dancing-halls near at hand, and the shuffling of the feet of the 
 multitudes who were passing through it, and then, a few minutes 
 later, the muffled music of the orchestra and the deadened drum- 
 ming of the dancing within. 
 
 That was more than they could bear, in their present state of 
 excitement, without taking part in the scene of it, so within five 
 minutes more, they were passing through the turn-stile themselves 
 and hurrying down a tunnel of trees, lit up by coloured lamps, to 
 the open door of the dancing-hall — deep in a dark garden which 
 seemed to sleep in shadow on either side of them. 
 
 The vast place, decorated in gold and domed with glass, was 
 ciiowded, but going up into the gallery the young men secured seats 
 by the front rail and were able to look down. What a spectacle ! 
 
72 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Never before, they thought, though they had travelled round the 
 world, had they seen anything to compare with it. To the clash of 
 the brass instruments and the boom of the big drums, five thousand 
 young men and young women were dancing on the floor below. 
 Most of the men wore flannels and coloured waist-scarves, and 
 most of the girls were in muslin and straw hats. They were only 
 the workers from the mills and factories of Lancashire and York- 
 shire, but the flush of the sun and the sea was in their faces and 
 the joy and health of young life was in their blood. 
 
 Stowell felt himself becoming giddy. Waves of perfume were 
 floating up to him, with the warmth of women's bright eyes, red 
 lips and joyous laughter. His nerves were quivering; his pulses 
 were beating with a povmding rush. He was beginning to feel 
 afraid of himself and he had an almost irresistable impulse to get 
 up and go. 
 
 II 
 
 One other person important to this story had come to Douglas 
 that day — Bessie Collister. During the first three years after her 
 return home from Castletown she had lived in physical fear of 
 Dan Baldromma; but during the next three years, having grown 
 big and strong and become useful on the farm, she had been more 
 than able to hold her own with him, and he had even been compelled 
 to pay her wages. 
 
 " I don't know in the world what's coming over the girls," he 
 would say. " In my young days they were content with priddhas 
 and herrings three times a day, and welcome, but nothing will do 
 now, if it's your own daughter itself, but ten pounds a year per 
 annum, and as much loaf bread and butcher's mate as would fill 
 the inside of a liroe kiln." 
 
 " Aw, but the girl's smart though," Mrs. Collister would 
 answer. 
 
 " I'm saying nothing against her," Dan would reply. " A 
 middling good girl enough, and handy with the bases, but imperent 
 grown — imperent uncommon and bad with the tongue." 
 
 There was scarcely a farmer on the island who would not have 
 given Bessie twice the wages Dan paid her, but she remained at 
 home, partly for reasons of her own and partly to protect her 
 mother from Dan's brutalities by holding over his head the threat 
 of leaving him. 
 
 Mrs. Collister, who had been stricken with sciatica and was 
 hobbling about on a stick, had by this time taken refuge from her 
 life-long martyrdom in religion, having joined the " Primitives," 
 whose chapel (a whitewashed barn) stood at the opposite angle of 
 
THE CALL OF BESSIE COLLISTER 73 
 
 the glen and the high road. She had tried to induce her daughter 
 to follow her there, but Bessie had refused, having come to the 
 conclusion that the " locals " on the " plan-beg," whose favourite 
 subject was the crucifixion of the flesh, were always preaching at 
 her mother, or pointing at her. 
 
 So on Sunday mornings when the church bells were ringing 
 across the Curragh, and the chapel-going women of the parish 
 were going by with their hymn-books in their handkerchiefs, and 
 old Will Skillicorne, who was a class-leader, was coming down 
 from his thatched cottage in his tall beaver, black frock coat and 
 black kid gloves, Bessie, in her sunbonnet and a pair of Dan's 
 old boots, and with her skirt tucked up over her linsey-wolsey petti- 
 coat, would be seen feeding the pigs or washing out a bowl of pota- 
 toes at the pump. 
 
 And on Sunday evenings, while the Primitives were singing a 
 hymn outside their chapel before going in for service, she would be 
 tripping past, lightly shod, and wearing a hat with an ostrich 
 feather, on her way to town, where a German band played sacred 
 music on the promenade, and young people, walking arm-in-arm, 
 laughed and " glimed " at each other under the gas-light. 
 
 " I wonder at herself though, bringing up her daughter like a 
 haythen in a Christian land," old Will would say. " But then 
 what can you expect from a child of sin and a son of Belial " — ^the 
 latter being a dig at Dan, whose lusty voice could always be heard 
 over the singing, reading aloud to himself in the kitchen the 
 " Rights of Man " or " The Mistakes of Moses." 
 
 Bessie was a full-developed and warm-blooded woman by this 
 time, living all day and every day in the natural world of the 
 farmyard, ready to break loose at the first touch of the hand of a 
 live man if only he were the right one, and having no better relief 
 for the fever of her womanhood than an occasional dance in the 
 big bam at Kirk Michael Fair. 
 
 But then came her adventure with Stowell and Gell in the glen 
 and it altered everything. Running down in her excitement she 
 told her mother what had happened, and her mother, in a moment 
 of tenderness, told Dan, and Dan, in the impurity of his heart, 
 drew his own conclusions. 
 
 " It's the Spaker's son again," he said, making a noise in 
 his nostrils. 
 
 The young men had camped out there expressly to meet Bessie, 
 and it wasn't the first time the girl had gone up to them. 
 
 " Goodness sakes, man veen, how do thou know that? And 
 what's the harm done anyway? " said Mrs. Collister. 
 
 " Wait and see what's the harm, woman. Girls is not to trust 
 
74 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 when a wastrel like that is about. We've known it before now, 
 haven't we? " 
 
 To one other person Bessie told the story of the glen, and that 
 was her chief friend, Susie Stephen, the English barmaid at the 
 Ginger Hall Inn — a girl of fair complexion and some good looks 
 who had shocked the young wives of the parish by wearing short 
 frocks, transparent stockings and a blouse cut low over the bosom. 
 
 It was at closing-time a few nights after the event, and as the 
 girls stood whispering together by the half -open door, with the 
 lights put out in the bar behind them, they squealed with laughter, 
 laid hold of each other and shuddered. 
 
 The young men had gone from the glen by that time, but the 
 August holidays were coming, so they decided to go up to Douglas 
 on the Saturday following to dance off their excitement. 
 
 At five o'clock that day, having milked her cows, and given a 
 drink of meal and water to her calves, Bessie was in her bedroom 
 making ready for her journey. 
 
 It was a stuffy little one-eyed chamber over the dairy, entered 
 from the first landing of the stairs, open to the whitewashed 
 scraas (which gave it a turfy odour), having a skylight in the 
 thatch, a truckle bed, a deal table for wash-stand and a few dried 
 sheepskins on the floor for rugs. 
 
 Bessie threw off the big unlaced boots and the other garments 
 of the cow-house, kicking the one into a corner and throwing the 
 others in a disorderly mass on to the bed over her pink-and-white 
 sunbonnet, washed to the waist and then folded her arms over each 
 other in their warmth and roundness and laughed to herself in 
 sheer joy of bounding health and conscious beauty. 
 
 While doing so she heard her step-father's voice in the kitchen 
 below, loud as usual and as full of protest, but she had a matter 
 of more moment to think of now — what to wear out of her 
 scanty wardrobe. 
 
 The question was easily decided. After putting on white rub- 
 ber shoes and white stockings, she drew aside a sheet on the wall 
 that ran on a string and took down a white woollen skirt and a new 
 cream-coloured blouse cut low at the neck like Susie's. 
 
 But the anchor of her hope was her hat, which she was to wear 
 for the first time, having bought it the day before in Ramsey. 
 It was shaped like a shell, with a round lip in front, and to find the 
 proper angle for it on her head was a perplexing problem. So she 
 stood long and twisted about before an unf ramed sheet of silvered 
 glass which hung by a nail on the wall, with a lash comb in her 
 hand a number of hat-pins across her mouth, while the floor 
 creaked under her, and the conversation went on below. 
 
TBE CALL OF BESSIE C0LLI8TER 75 
 
 She got it right at last, just tilted a little aside, to look pert and 
 saucy, with her black hair, which was long and wavy, creeping up 
 to it like a cushion. And then, standing off from her glass to 
 look at it again over her shoulder, with eyes that danced with de- 
 light, she turned to the door and walked with a buoyant step 
 downstairs. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Dan Baldromma also had made an engagement for that day, 
 handbills having been distributed in Ramsey during the morning 
 saying that " Mr. Daniel Collister of Baldromma " would deliver 
 an address in the market-place at seven o'clock in the evening. 
 
 At five Dan had strapped down the lever which stopped the flow 
 of water on to his overshot wheel and stepped into the dwelling- 
 house, where Liza, his wife, had laid tea for two and was blowing 
 up a fire of dry gorse to boil the kettle. 
 
 " Tell your girl to put a lil rub on my Sunday boots," he said. 
 
 " But she's upstairs dressing for Douglas," said Mrs. Collister. 
 
 " You don't say? " said Dan. " So that's the way she's earn- 
 ing her living.'' " 
 
 " Chut, man," said Mrs. Collister. " If a girl's in life she 
 wants aisement sometimes, doesn't she.? And her ragging and 
 tearing to keep the farm going, and a big wash coming on next 
 week, too." ^ 
 
 " Well, that's good ! That's rich ! I thought it was myself 
 that was keeping the farm going. Douglas, you say ? Well, well ! 
 I wonder at you, encouraging your girl to go to such places, and 
 you a bound Methodist. Tell her to put a rub on my boots, ma'am." 
 
 " I'll do it myself, Dan," said Mrs. Collister. " It's little 
 enough time the girl will have to catch the train, and her fixing 
 on her new hat, too." 
 
 " New hat, eh? " 
 
 " Aw, yes, man, the one she bought at Miss CorkiU's 
 yesterday." 
 
 " What a woman ! And you telling me, when you got five 
 goolden sovereigns out of me on Monday that she was for wearing 
 it at the Sulby Anniversary. I wonder you are not afraid for 
 your quarterly ticket." 
 
 " But it was only the girl's half year's wages, and the labourer 
 is worthy of his hire. Thou art always saying so at the Cross 
 anyway." 
 
 " Hould thy tongue, woman, and don't be milking that ould 
 cow any more — it's dry, I tell thee." 
 
 It was at this moment that Bessie came downstairs, and Dan 
 
76 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 who was on the three-legged stool before the fire, making wtj 
 faces as he dragged off his mill-boots with a boot-jack, fell on 
 her at first with his favourite weapon, irony. 
 
 " Aw, the smart you are in your new hat, girl — smart 
 tremenjous! " 
 
 " I didn't think you'd have the taste to like it," said Bessie, 
 sitting at the table. 
 
 "Taste, is it.'" said Dan. "Aw, the grand we are! The 
 pride that's in some ones is extraordinary though. There'll be 
 no holding you! You'll be going up and up! Your mother has 
 always been used of a poor man's house and the wind above the 
 thatch. But you'll be wanting feather beds and marble halls, 
 I'm thinking." 
 
 " They won't be yours to find then, so you needn't worry," 
 said Bessie. 
 
 " You think not.'' I'm not so sure of that. Man is born to 
 trouble as the sparks fly upwards .... So you're for Douglas, 
 are you.' " 
 
 " Yes, I am, if you'll let me take my tea in time for the train." 
 
 " Aisy, bogh, aisy ! " said Mrs. Collister. 
 
 " Well, you're yoiu: own woman now, so I suppose you've got 
 lave to go," said Dan. 
 
 And then rising to his stockinged feet, his face hard and all his 
 irony gone, he added, " But I'm my own man, too, and this is my 
 own house, I'm thinking, and if you're not home for eleven o'clock 
 to-night, my door will be shut on you." 
 
 Bessie leapt up from the table. 
 
 " Shut your door if you like. There'll be lots of ones to open 
 theirs," she cried, and swept out of the house. 
 
 "There you are, woman!" said Dan. "What did I say? 
 Imperent uncommon and dirty with the tongue ! She'll have to 
 clane it this time though. If she's not back for eleven she'll take 
 the road and no more two words about it." 
 
 Mrs. Collister struggled to her feet and followed Bessie, pre- 
 tending she had forgotten something. 
 
 " Bessie! Bessie! " 
 
 Bessie stopped at the end of the " street " and her mother 
 hobbled up to her. 
 
 " Be home for eleven, bogh," she whispered. " It's freckened 
 mortal I am that himself has some bad schame on." 
 
 " What schame? " asked Bessie. 
 
 " I don't know what, but something, so give him no chance." 
 
 " What do I care about his chance ? " 
 
 " Aw, bolla veen, boUa veen, haven't I enough to bear with 
 
THE CALL OP BESSIE OOLLISTER 77 
 
 thy father and ■ thee ? Catch the ten train back — ^promise me, 
 promise me." 
 
 " Very well, I promise," said Bessie, and at .the next moment 
 she was gone. 
 
 Five minutes later, arm-in-arm with Susie, she was swinging 
 down the road to the railway station for Douglas. 
 
 The little gay town, when they reached it, was at full tide, 
 ■with pianos banging in the open-windowed houses, guitars twang- 
 ing in the streets, and lines of young men marching along the 
 pavements and singing in chorus. The girls, fresh from their 
 twinkling village by the lonely hills, with the river burrowing 
 under the darkness of the bridge, were almost dizzy with the sights 
 and sounds. 
 
 When they came skipping down the steep streets to the front, 
 and plunged into the electric light which iUimiinated the bay, they 
 could scarcely restrain themselves from running. And when, 
 bubbling with the animal life which had been suppressed, famished 
 and starved in them, they passed through the turn-stile to the 
 dancing-palace and hurried down the tunnel of trees, lit by 
 coloured lamps, and saw the stream of white light which came from 
 the open door, and heard the crash of the band and the drumming 
 of the dancers within, their feet were scarcely touching the ground 
 and they felt as if they wanteid to fly. And when at last, having 
 entered the hall, the whole blazing scene burst on them in a blind- 
 ing flash, they drew up with a breathless gasp. 
 
 "Oh! Oh!" 
 
 One moment they stood by the door with blinking and spark- 
 ling eyes, their linked arms quivering in close grip. Then Bessie, 
 who was the first to recover from the intoxicating shock, looked up 
 and around, and saw Stowell and Gell sitting in the gallery. 
 
 " Good sakes alive," she whispered, " they're there ! " 
 
 "Who? The gentlemen.?" 
 
 " Yes, in the front row. Be quiet, girl. They see us. Don't 
 look up. They might come down." 
 
 And then the girls laughed with glee at their conscious 
 make-believe, and their arms quivered again to the rush of their 
 warm blood. 
 
 IV 
 
 " Alick, isn't that our young friend of the glen? " 
 
 " Bessie Collister? Where? " 
 
 " Down there, standing with the fair girl, just inside the door." 
 
 " Well, yes, upon my word, I think it is ! " 
 
 " I've a great mind to go down to them. Let us go." 
 
78 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " No ? Really ? In a place like this ? " 
 
 "Why not, man? " 
 
 " Well, if you don't mind, I don't." 
 
 A few minutes later, in an interval between the dances, Victor, 
 coming behind Bessie, touched her on the shoulder. 
 
 " How are those sweet-smelling heifers — — -still grazing on 
 the mountains.' " 
 
 Bessie, who had watched the young men coming downstairs, 
 and felt them at her back, turned with a look of surprise, then 
 laughed merrily and introduced Susie. For a few nervous mo- 
 ments there were the light nothings which at such times are the 
 only wisdom. Then the violins began to flourish for another 
 dance, and the two couples paired off — Victor with Bessie and 
 Susie with Gell. 
 
 Victor took Bessie's hand with a certain delicacy to which she 
 was quite unaccustomed and which flattered her greatly. The 
 dance was a waltz, and she had never waltzed before, so they had 
 to go carefully at first, but when the dance was coming to an end 
 she was swinging to the rhythm of the orchestra as if she had 
 waltzed a hundred times. 
 
 In the interval the two couples came together again, and there 
 was much general chatter and laughter. Gell joined freely in 
 both, and if at first he had had any backward thoughts of the 
 promise he had given to his father they were gone by this time. 
 
 Another dance began and without changing partners they set 
 off afresh, Stowell taking Bessie's hand with a firmer grasp and 
 Bessie holding to his shoulder with a stronger sense of possession. 
 His nerves were tingling. Turning round and round among 
 women's smiling faces, and with Bessie's smiling face by his side, 
 he had the sense of sweeping his partner along with an energy 
 of physical power he had never felt before. 
 
 When the orchestra stopped the second time and they went in 
 search of their companions, they discovered Susie on a seat, pant- 
 ing and perspiring, and Gell fanning her with the brim of his 
 straw hat. 
 
 Victor's excitement was becoming feverish. He wanted Bessie 
 to himself, and during the third dance he felt himself dragging 
 her to the opposite side of the hall. She knew what he was doing, 
 and found it enchanting to be carried off by sheer force. 
 
 When the dance came to an end Victor put Bessie's moist hand 
 through his arm and walked up and down with her. Her throat 
 was throbbing and her breast rising and falling under her low-cut 
 blouse. They spoke little, but sometimes he turned his head to 
 
TSE CALL OF BESSIE GOLLISTEB 79 
 
 look at her, and then she turned her eyes to his. He thought her 
 black eyes were looking blacker than ever. 
 
 The evening was now at its zenith, and the orchestra was tun- 
 ing up for the " shadow-dance." The white lights on the walls 
 went out, and over the arc lamps in the glass roof a number ,of 
 coloured disks were passed, to throw shadows over the dancers, as 
 of the sunrise, the sunset, the moon and the night with its stars. 
 The dance itself was of a nondescript kind in which at intervals, 
 the man, with a whoop, lifted his partner oif her feet and swung 
 her round him in his arms— a sort of symbol of marriage by 
 capture. 
 
 When the shadow-dance ended there was much hand-clapping 
 among the dancers. It had to be repeated, this time with a more 
 rapid movement and to the accompaniment of a song, which, being 
 sung by the men in chorus, made the hall throb like the inside of a 
 drum. Many of the dancers fell out exhausted, but Victor and 
 Bessie kept up to the last. 
 
 Then the big side doors were thrown open, and amid a babel of 
 noise, cries and laughter, nearly all the dancers trooped out of the 
 hall into the garden to cool. Victor gave his arm to Bessie and 
 they went out also. 
 
 Lights gleamed here and there in the darkness of the trees, 
 throwing shadows full of mystery and charm. After a while the 
 orchestra within was heard beginning again, and most of the 
 dancers hastened back to the hall, but Victor said, 
 
 " Let us stay out a little longer." 
 
 Bessie agreed and for some minutes more they wandered 
 through the garden, in and out of the electric light, with the low 
 murmur of the sea coming to them from the shore and the muffled 
 music from the hall. 
 
 She was breathing deeply, and he was feeling a little dizzy. 
 They found themselves talking in whispers, both in the Anglo- 
 Manx, and then laughing nervously. 
 
 " Did you raelly, raelly see the young colts racing on the 
 tops, though? " 
 
 "■'Deed no, not I, woman. But I belave in my heart I know 
 who did." 
 
 "Who.?" 
 
 "Why you!" 
 
 At that word, and the touch of his hand about her waist, she 
 made a nervous laugh, and turned to him, her eyes closed, her 
 lips parted and her white teeth showing, and they drew together 
 in a long kiss. 
 
8« TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 At the next moment a clock struck coldly through the still ait 
 from the tower of a neighboring church and Bessie broke away, 
 
 " Gracious me, that must be ten o'clock. I have to catch th* 
 ten train home." 
 
 " You can't now. It's impossible," he said, and he tried 
 to hold her. 
 
 " I must — I promised," she cried, and she bounded off. He 
 called and followed a few steps, but she was gone. 
 
 Feeling like a torn wound he returned to the dancing-hall. 
 The scene was the same as before but it seemed crude and tame and 
 even dead to him now. Where was GeU ? He must have gone to see 
 the fair girl off by the ten train. He would come back presently. 
 
 Victor returned to the hotel. To compose his nerves while he 
 waited he called for another half bottle of wine, and drank it, 
 iced. The music was still murmuring in his ears. After a while 
 it stopped; there were a few bars of the National Anthem, and 
 then the pattering like rain of iimumerable feet on the paved way 
 from the dancing-hall to the promenade. It was now a few 
 minutes to eleven, and remembering that that was the hour of the 
 last train to the north he walked up to the station. 
 
 A noisy throng was on the platform, chiefly young Manx 
 farming people of both sexes, returning to their homes in the 
 country. The open third-class carriages were full of them, all 
 talking and laughing together. 
 
 Victor walked down the line of the train and looked into each 
 of the dim-lit carriages for Bessie, thinking it impossible that she 
 could have caught the earlier one. Not finding her, he inquired if 
 the ten train had left promptly and was told it had been half-an- 
 hour late. She must have gone. 
 
 He got into an empty first-class compartment, folded his arms 
 and closed his eyes and the train started. While it ran into the dark 
 country the farming people, being unable to talk with comfort, 
 sang. Over the rolling of the wheels their singing came in a dull 
 roar, and when the train stopped at the wayside stations it went up 
 in the sudden silence in a wild discord of male and female voices. 
 
 Victor was beginning to feel cold. He put up the window. 
 His brain which had been blurred was becoming lucid. He re- 
 called the scenes he had taken part in and some of them seemed to 
 him now to have been crude and common and even a little vulgar. 
 He thought of Bessie and felt ashamed. 
 
 When the train drew up at the station for the glen he turned his 
 face from the direction of the mill, and to defeat a desire to look 
 at it he opened the window at the other side of the carriage and 
 put out his head. 
 
THE MASTER OF MAN 81 
 
 The free air was refreshing to body and brain, but when his 
 eyes had become accustomed to the darkness he saw the broad belt 
 of the trees of Ballamoar. That brought a stabbing memory of 
 Janet and the promise he had given her, and then of the Deemster 
 and his conversation with the Governor. 
 
 He began to shiver, and to feel as if he were awakening from a 
 fit of moral intoxication. To-morrow he would go home, and since 
 he could not trust himself any longer, he would put himself out of 
 the reach of temptation by living at Ballamoar in future. 
 
 When the train drew up at Ramsey it was half -past twelve. 
 As he walked out of the quiet station into the echoing streets of 
 the sleeping town he was drawing a deep breath and saying 
 to himself: 
 
 "Thank God!" 
 
 It was all over. 
 
 CHAPTER NINE 
 
 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Dan Baldromma's meeting in the market-place had not been 
 the success he had expected. Standing on the steps of the tovra 
 lamp, between the Saddle Inn and the Ship Store, he had dis- 
 coursed on the rights of the labourer to the land he cultivated. 
 
 The Earth was the Lord's, and the fulness thereof. Therefore 
 it could not belong to the big ones who were adding field to field — 
 least of all to their wastrels of sons who were doing nothing but 
 harig about the roads and the glens to ruin the daughters of decent 
 men. The moral of this was that the land belonged to the people 
 and the time was coming when they would pay no rent for it. 
 
 Dan's audience of Manx farmers had listened to this new gos- 
 pel with Manx stolidity, but a group of young English visitors, 
 clerks from the cotton factories, looking down from the balcony 
 of the Saddle Inn, had received it with open derision. 
 
 Dan had ignored their opposition as long as possible, merely 
 saying, when his audience laughed at their sallies, 
 
 " We must make allowance for some ones, comrades — children 
 still, they've not been rocked enough." 
 
 But when at length they had called him Bradlaugh Junior and 
 IngersoU the Second and' told him to keep his tongue o£F better 
 men, Dan had looked up at the balcony and cried, 
 
 "If you're calling me by them honoured names I'm taking my 
 hat off to you " (suiting the action to the word), " but if you're 
 saying you are better men we'll be going into a back coort some- 
 wheres and taking off our jackets and westcots." 
 6 
 
82 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 To preserve the peace the police had had to put an end to the 
 meeting, whereupon Dan, spitting contemptuously and snorting 
 about " The Cottonies " and " the Cotton balls," had harnessed his 
 horse at the Plough Inn and driven home in a dull rage. 
 
 It had been ten o'clock when he got back to Baldromma, and 
 after imharnessing his horse in his undrained stable, and wiping 
 his best boots with a wisp of straw, he had stepped round to 
 the kitchen. 
 
 His wife was there, beating time on the hearthstone to a long- 
 dravra Methodist hymn while she stirred the porridge in a pot that 
 hung over a slow peat fire. 
 
 " Tell me the old, old story, .... 
 Of Jesus and His love." 
 
 " Your daughter isn't back then.'' " said Dan with a growl. 
 
 " Be raisonable, man," said Mrs. CoUister. " Eleven o'clock 
 thou said, and it's only a piece after ten yet." 
 
 She poured out the porridge and hobbled to the dairy for a 
 basin of milk, and then Dan, after a sour silence, sat down to 
 his supper. 
 
 " They were telling me in Ramsey," he said, making noises 
 with his spoon, " that the Spaker's son went up to Douglas to-day." 
 
 " Like enough! " said Mrs. CoUister. 
 
 " I'll go bail your girl went up to meet him." 
 
 " Sakes alive, man veen, what for should thou be saying that ? " 
 
 " She's fit enough for it anyway." 
 
 " But what has the girl done? Twenty-four years for Spring 
 and not a man at her yet." 
 
 " Chut ! Once they cut the cables that sort is the worst that's 
 going. She'd be an angel itself though to stand up against a 
 waistrel like yander." 
 
 " Bessie will be home for eleven," said Mrs. CoUister. 
 
 " She'd better, or she'U find Dan Baldromma a man of his 
 word, ma'am." 
 
 After that there was another sour silence in which both watched 
 the open-faced clock whose pendulum swung by the wall. Tick, 
 tick tick, said the clock. To the man it was going slowly, to the 
 woman it seemed to fly. But hardly had the fingers pointed to 
 eleven, or the chain begun to shake for the first stroke of the hour, 
 when Dan was at the door, bolting and locking it. 
 
 " Will thou not give the girl a few minutes' grace, even ? " 
 
 " Not half a minute." 
 
 " But the ten train hasn't whistled at the bridge yet." 
 
THE MASTER OF MAN 83 
 
 " I've nothing to do with trains, Misthress Collister. Eleven 
 o'clock, I said, and now it's eleven and better." 
 
 " But surely thou'U never shut thy door on a poor girl in the 
 middle of the night? " 
 
 " There's others that's open to her — she said so herself, remem- 
 ber. She's not for coming home to-night, so take your candle and 
 get to bed, woman." 
 
 " But the train must be late — I'U wait up myself for her." 
 
 " You might burn your candle to the snuff — she's not for com- 
 ing, I tell you." 
 
 " But she promised me — faithfully promised me . . . . " 
 
 " Get to bed, ma'am. I wonder you're not thinking shame, 
 making excuses for the bad doings of your by-child, and you 
 a Methodist." 
 
 The woman was on the verge of tears. 
 
 " Shame enough it is, Dan Collister, when a mother has to shut 
 her heart to her own child if she's not to show disrespect to' 
 her husband." 
 
 In the intimacy of the bedroom Dan threw off all disguise. 
 Winding his silver-lever watch and hanging it with its Albert on a 
 hook in the bed-post, and then sitting on the side of the bed to 
 undress, he almost crowed over his prospects. That son of the 
 Speaker would have to pay for his whistle this time ! Baldromma 
 would be his by heirship, and a father had a right to damages for 
 the loss of the services of his daughter. 
 
 " There'll be no more rent going paying by me, I'm thinking," 
 said Dan. 
 
 So that was his scheme ! Mrs. Collister stood long in her cotton 
 nightdress, fumbling with the strings of her night-cap, and won- 
 dering if she could ever lie down with the man again. 
 
 " Are you never for putting out that candle and coming to bed, 
 woman? " 
 
 Half-an-hour passed and the mother lay still and listened. 
 Dan was asleep by this time and breathing audibly, but there was 
 no sound outside save the slipping of the water from the fixed 
 wheel and the stamping of the horse in the stable. At last came 
 the whistling of the train, and a few minutes later, Bessie's step on 
 the " street " and then the rattling of the latch of the kitchen door. 
 
 Mrs. Collister tried to slip out of bed without awakening Dan, 
 but her sciatica had made her limbs stiff and she knocked over the 
 candlestick that stood on a chair beside her. This awakened her 
 husband, and hearing the noise downstairs, he rolled out of bed, 
 saying, in a threatening voice, 
 
 " Lie thou there — I'll settle her." 
 
84 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 He went out to the stairhead, slamming the bedroom door 
 behind him, threw up the sash of a window on the landing, and 
 shouted into the darkness: 
 
 "Who's there?" 
 
 " Me, of course," cried Bessie. 
 
 A fierce altercation followed, in which Dan's voice was harsh 
 and coarse, and Bessie's shrill with anger. 
 
 " Then find your bed where you've found your company," 
 shouted Dan. And shutting down the window with a crash he 
 returned to the bedroom. 
 
 The mother heard Bessie going ofi^, and the fading sound of 
 the girl's footsteps tore her terribly. But after a few minutes 
 more Dan was making noise in his nostrils again and she got up 
 and crept downstairs to the kitchen (where the dull red of the 
 dying turf left just enough light to see by), slid the bolts back 
 noiselessly, opened the door and called in a whisper : 
 
 "Bessie!" 
 
 No answer came back to her, so she stepped out to the end of 
 the cobbled way, barefooted and in her nightdress and nightcap, 
 and called again: 
 
 " Bessie ! Bessie ! " 
 
 Still there was no reply; so she returned to the kitchen, leav- 
 ing the door on the latch, and sat for a long hour in a rocking chair 
 by the hearth (souvenir of the days when Bessie was a child, and 
 she had rocked her to sleep in it), fighting, in the misery of her 
 heart, with the black thought which Dan had put there. 
 
 At length she remembered Susie and persuaded herself that 
 Bessie must have gone to the Ginger Hall to sleep. 
 
 " Yes, Bessie must have gone to Susie." 
 
 Being comforted by this thought, and feeling cold, for the fire 
 had gone out, she crept upstairs. It was hard to go by Bessie's 
 room on the landing. Every night for years she had stopped there 
 on her way to bed. And in the winter, when the wind in the trees 
 in the glen made a roar like the sea, she had called through the 
 closed door: " Art thou warm enough, Bessie, or will I bring thee 
 my flannel petticoat.'' " And now the door was open and the 
 room was empty! 
 
 Dan was still asleep when she got back to the bedroom and her 
 approach did not awaken him, so she fumbled her way to the bed 
 (knowing where she was when her feet touched the warm sheep- 
 skin that lay by the side of it) and then opened the clothes and 
 crept in. 
 
 The cold air she brought with her awakened Dan, and he 
 turned on the pillow and said. 
 
TSE MASTER OF MAN 85 
 
 " You've not been letting in that girl of yours, have you? " 
 
 "No!" 
 
 Dan made a grunt of satisfaction, and then said, with his face 
 to the wall, 
 
 " Remember, you'll have to be up early to milk for yourself 
 in the morning." 
 
 ■' Yes." 
 
 Then came a yawn, and then a snore, and then silence fell on 
 the little house. 
 
 II 
 
 Bessie had run all the way to the station and then found that 
 the train had nearly half-an-hour to wait for the passengers by the 
 last of the day's steamers. The carriages were full of English 
 visitors, but there were very few Manx people and' she could not see 
 Susie anywhere. This vexed her with the thought of having to 
 tear herself away a good hour earlier than anybody else. It was 
 all her mother's fault — getting her to make that ridiculous promise. 
 
 From such thoughts, as the train ran into the country, her mind 
 swung back to the memory of Stowell. She recalled his looks, 
 his smile, his whole person, and every word he had said to her 
 down to the moment of that burning kiss. 
 
 What pleased her most was the certainty that he had never 
 kissed a girl before. The trembling of his lips, when they were 
 lip to lip, told her that. And in spite of all that had been said of 
 him she was sure he had never had a woman in his arms until 
 to-night — ^never ! " 
 
 And she? Well, she had never before been kissed by a man. 
 Alick Gell? She was only a child then. Kiss-in-the-ring at 
 Michael Fair? Chut! A girl felt that no more than the wind 
 blowing over her bare cheek. 
 
 By the clocks at the wayside stations she saw she was going 
 to be late getting home, but she didn't care. Dan Baldromma 
 wasn't fool enough to shut her out. But let him if he liked to! 
 Where would he go to get another girl to work for her wages — 
 summer and winter, as if the creatures had been her own, up 
 all hours calving, and out before the dawn in the lambing season, 
 when the hoar-frost was on the fields ? 
 
 It was twenty minutes past eleven when she got down at the 
 glen station, and there was Susie getting down also ! Susie was in 
 the sulks. Not only had Bessie deliberately lost her in the danc- 
 ing-hall, but after she had hurried away to catch the ten train, 
 knowing Bessie had promised to return by it, she had had to come 
 back alone! 
 
86 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 This added to Bessie's vexation, and when she reached the 
 house, and found the door locked on her, it expressed itself in her 
 hand when she rattled the kitchen latch. 
 
 Then came the scene with Dan Baldromma who shouted down 
 at her from the upper window as if she had been a thief — it was 
 suffocating! And when he said, " Find your bed where you've 
 found your company," and banged down the sash on her, she flung 
 away, crying, as well as she could for the anger that was 
 choking her, 
 
 " So I will, and you'll be sorry for it some day." 
 
 At that moment she meant to sleep with Susie at the Ginger 
 Hall Inn, and offer herself next day to one or other of the farmers 
 who had so often asked for her. But she had not gone many steps 
 before she reflected that all the farmers' houses would be full now 
 and nobody could take her in until Michaelmas. 
 
 No matter ! She might have been no better off. Those old 
 farmers were all the same. If it wasn't the bullying of brutes like 
 Dan Baldromma it was the meanness of old hypocrites like Teare 
 of Lezayre, who laid foundation stones, and put purses of money 
 on top of them, and then went home and gave his girls cold 
 potatoes and salt herrings for supper ! 
 
 That made her think of young Willie Teare. She had met him 
 in Ramsey the day before, when he had said he was tired of slaving 
 for his father, and meant to set up in a farm for himself as soon 
 as he could find the right wife. But no thank you, no marrying 
 with a farmer for her ! After a woman had worn herself to the 
 bone, keeping things together and gathering the stock, and she 
 was doubled up with sciatica, and ought to be in bed, with some- 
 body to wait on her, the husband was nagging and ragging her 
 from morning to night. That was marriage! Hadn't she seen 
 enough of it? 
 
 Bessie had reached the Ginger Hall by this time, and, seeing 
 a light in Susie's window, she was about to call up when (with 
 Dan's insult ' Find your bed, etc' still rankling in her mind) a 
 startling thought seized her and made her heart leap and the hot 
 blood to rush through and through her. There was one way to 
 escape from Dan Baldromma and his tyrannies — Mr. Stowell ! 
 
 Mr. Stowell would return by the last train to Ramsey, having 
 bachelor rooms there, in which he lived alone — so people were 
 saying. If she were to meet him on his arrival and tell him what 
 had happened he would find some way out for her. Of course he 
 would ! She was sure he would ! 
 
 Ashamed? Why should she be? People had said all they 
 
TEE MASTER OF MAN 87 
 
 could say about a girl like her while she was a baby in arms, and 
 who was there to say anything now ? 
 
 And then Mr. Stowell wouldn't care either. He was rich, 
 therefore he had no need to be afraid of anybody. And if he were 
 fond of a girl he would stand up for her and defy the whole island 
 — that was the sort of young man he was ! 
 
 The last train could not reach Ramsey before midnight, and 
 it might be later. It was only half -past eleven yet. There was 
 still time. Whj shouldn't she.'' 
 
 " ' Find your bed/ indeed ! We'll see ! We'll see ! " 
 
 Three-quarters of an hour later she was approaching Ramsey. 
 The stars had gone out; the night was becoming gloomy; she was 
 tired and her spirit of defiance was breaking down under a chilling 
 thought. What if Mr. Stowell did not want her? It was one 
 thing for a young man to amuse himself with a girl in the glen or 
 in a dancing-hall, but to become responsible for her .... 
 
 " If he felt like that and found me in Ramsey what would 
 he think.? " 
 
 Afraid and ashamed she was slowing down with the thought 
 of returning to the Ginger Hall when she heard the train whistle 
 behind her, and looking back, saw its fiery head forging through 
 the darkness. That sent the hot blood bounding to her heart again, 
 and within a few minutes she was walking slowly down the main 
 street of the town, which was all shut up and silent. 
 
 She knew where Mr. Stowell's rooms were — ^in Old Post Office 
 Place — and that he would have to come this way to get to them. 
 She heard the train drawing up in the station, the passengers 
 trooping out, parting in the square and shouting their good-nights 
 as they went ofi" by the streets to the north and south. One group 
 was coming behind, on the other side of the way, laughing over 
 something they had seen at a place of entertainment. They passed 
 and turned down a side street and the echo of their voices died 
 away at the back of the houses. 
 
 Then came a few moments of sickening silence. Bessie, as she 
 walked on, could hear nothing more, and another chilling thought 
 came to her. What if Mr. Stowell had not returned by the train 
 and were sleeping the night in Douglas? 
 
 All her courage and defiance ebbed away, and she saw herself 
 for the first time as she was — a miserable girl, cast out of her 
 step-father's house, in which she had worked so hard but in which 
 nothing belonged to her, homeless, penniless (for she had spent 
 her half-year's wages on her clothes) without a shelter, in the 
 middle of the night, alone ! 
 
 It was beginning to rain and Bessie was crying. All at once 
 
88 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 she heard a firm step behind her. It was he! She was sure of it! 
 Her heart again beat high and all her nerves began to tingle. He 
 was overtaking her. She turned her head aside and wiped her 
 eyes. He was walking beside her. She could hear his breathing. 
 
 " Bessie ! " 
 
 " Mr. Stowell ! " 
 
 " Good gracious, girl, what are you doing here.' " 
 
 And then she told him. 
 
 Ill 
 
 " The brute ! The beast ! Did you tell him your train was late? " 
 
 " No. He ought to have known that for himself." 
 
 " So he ought. You are quite right there, Bessie. But didn't 
 your mother . . . . " 
 
 " Mother is afraid of her life of the man. She daren't say 
 anything." 
 
 " Was there any other house he might have thought you would 
 go to — any neighbour's, any relation's? " 
 
 " I have no relations. Sir." 
 
 " Ah ! . . . . Then he deliberately shut you out of his house in 
 the middle of the night, knowing you had nowhere else to go to ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " 
 
 " The damned scoundrel! " 
 
 Bessie, who had been crying again, was looking up at him with 
 wet but shining eyes. 
 
 " Well, what are you going to do now? Do you know anybody 
 in town who can take you in for to-night? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then I must knock up one of the Inns for you. Here's the 
 old Plough — what do you say to the Plough ? " 
 
 " Dan Baldromma goes there — Mrs. Beatiy would get into 
 trouble." 
 
 " The Saddle then? " 
 
 " I go there myself, every market-day, with butter and eggs — 
 people would be talking." 
 
 There was only the Mitre Hotel left, and Stowell himself 
 shrank from that. To go to the Mitre with a girl at this time of 
 night would be like shouting into the mouth of a megaphone. 
 Within twenty-four hours the whole town would hear the story, 
 with every explanation except the right one. 
 
 " But, good heavens, girl, I can't go home and go to bed and 
 leave you to walk about in the streets." 
 
 " I'll do whatever you think best, Sir," said Bessie, crying 
 again and stammering. 
 
TEE MASTER OF MAN 89 
 
 They were at the corner of Old Post Office Place by this time, 
 and, after a moment's hesitation, he took the girl's hand and drew 
 it through his arm and then turned quickly in the opposite direc- 
 tion, saying: 
 
 " Come, then, let us think." 
 
 It was still raining but Stowell was scarcely aware of that. 
 With the girl walking close by his side he was only conscious of a 
 return of the faint dizziness he had felt in the garden at Douglas. 
 To conquer this and to keep up his indignation about Dan Bal- 
 dromma, while they walked round the square of streets, he asked 
 what the man had said when he finally shut down the window. 
 
 " He said I was to find my bed where I had found my com- 
 pany," said Bessie, stammering again and with her head down. 
 
 " Meaning that you had been in bad company? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " The foul-minded ruffian ! " 
 
 His nerves were quivering, and he knew that the hot tide of his 
 indignation was ebbing rapidly. Suddenly an idea came to him 
 and he felt an immense relief — Mrs. Quayle! She was a good, 
 religious woman, who had seen sorrow herself, and that was the 
 best kind to go to in a time of trouble. She would take Bessie in 
 for to-night, and to-morrow they would all three go back together 
 to Baldromma, and then — ^then he would tell that old blackguard 
 what he thought of him. 
 
 " That's it, Bessie ! I wonder why in the world I didn't think 
 of it before? " 
 
 Bessie was answering " Yes " and " Yes," but her beaming 
 eyes were looking sideways up at him, and the blood was pounding 
 through his body with a rush. 
 
 They had got back to the corner of Old Post Office Place when 
 Stowell stopped and said: 
 
 " Wait ! Mrs. Q'uayle's house is rather a long way off — one of 
 the little fishermen's cottages on the south beach, you know. I-'m 
 not quite sure that she has a second bed. And then she might be 
 alarmed if two of us turned up at this time of night. What if I 
 run over first and make sure ? " 
 
 Again Bessie answered " Yes " and " Yes." 
 
 " But it's raining heavily now, and, of course, you can't stay 
 out in the streets any longer. Here are my rooms — just here. 
 Why shouldn't you step in and wait? I shall have to go upstairs 
 for an overcoat anywiny." 
 
 Bessie showed no embarrassment, and Victor felt at first that 
 what he was doing was something a little courageous and rather 
 noble. But as soon as they reached the door, and he began to 
 
90 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 fumble with his key to open it, he became nervous and a voice 
 within him seemed to say, " Take care ! " 
 
 " Come in," he said bravely, but when Bessie brushed him on 
 entering the house he trembled, and from that moment onwards 
 he was conscious of a struggle between his blood and his brain. 
 
 As he was closing the door on the inside he saw that there was a 
 letter in the letter-box at the back of it, but he left it there, and 
 held out his hand to Bessie to guide her up the stairs, saying: 
 
 " It's dark here. Give me your hand. Now come this way. 
 Don't be afraid. You shan't fall. I'll take care of you." 
 
 There were two short flights and then a landing, from which a 
 door opened on either side — on the right to Victor's offices, on the 
 left to his living-rooms. He opened the door on the left, leaving 
 Bessie to stand on the landing until he had found matches and 
 lit the gas. 
 
 He was long in finding them, and while rummaging in the dark 
 room he heard the girl's quick breathing behind him. 
 
 " Ah, here they are at last ! " he cried in a tremulous voice, 
 and then he lit up a branch under a white globe on one side of 
 the mantelpiece. 
 
 " Now you can come in," he said, and turning to the window he 
 loosened the cord of the Venetian blind and it came clattering down. 
 
 Bessie stepped into the room. It was a warm and cosy cham- 
 ber, with a thick Persian carpet, two easy chairs, an open book- 
 case full of law books, a desk-table with ink-stand, writing-pad 
 and reading-lamp (looking so orderly as to suggest that no work 
 was done there) and a large pier-glass with a small bust of a 
 pretty Neapolitan girl and a little silver-cased clock in front of it. 
 The clock was striking one. 
 
 " One o'clock ! It was stupid to stay out in the streets so 
 long, wasn't it.'' " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Your hat is dripping. Hadn't you better take it off for the 
 few minutes you'll have to stay? " 
 
 " Should I ? " 
 
 " Do ; and I'll light the gas-fire — a bachelor has to have gas- 
 fires, you know." 
 
 While he was down on his knees lighting the fire, and regulat- 
 ing its burning from blue to red, Bessie, with trembling fingers, 
 was drawing the pins out of her hat — ^the wonderful new hat of a 
 few hours ago, now wet and bedraggled. In doing so she pulled 
 down her hair and made a faint cry, 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " Don't mind that at this time of night," said Victor. But at 
 
THE MASTER OF MAN 91 
 
 sight of the girl's face, now framed in its shower of waving black 
 hair, his nervousness increased. He had always thought her a 
 good-looking girl, but he had never known before that she was 
 beautiful. 
 
 " My coat is wet, too. I must change it," he said, getting up 
 and going towards his bedroom door. " It would be foolish to put 
 an overcoat over a wet jacket, wouldn't it? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " But your blouse seems to be soaking. Why shouldn't you 
 take it off and dry it at the fire while I'm away at Mrs. Quayle's ? " 
 
 "Should I.?" 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 While he was in the inner room, opening and closing his ward- 
 robe, and changing his wet coat for a dry one, he kept on talking. 
 Mrs. Quayle was a good creature who had lost her husband in that 
 January gale a few years ago. She would take Bessie in — he was 
 sure she would. But this was only to drown the clamour of two 
 voices within himself, one of which was saying, " Must you go? " 
 and the other " Certainly you must ! Be a man and play the 
 game, for God's sake." 
 
 When he returned to the sitting-room the breath was almost 
 smitten out of his body by what he saw. Bessie had taken off her 
 blouse, and was kneeling by the fire to dry it. She did not raise 
 her eyes to his, and after a first glance he did not look at her. 
 Opening the outer door to the landing, where the hat-rail stood, 
 he pulled on a cap and dragged on an ulster, saying, in a 
 nervous voice, 
 
 " It's only a hop-skip-and-a-jump to Mrs. Quayle's. I shall 
 be back presently." 
 
 Suddenly there came a flash of lightning which lit up the 
 dark bedroom, and then a clap of thunder, loud and long, which 
 rattled the window frames. 
 
 " It would be foolish to go out in a storm like that, wouldn't 
 it? " he said. 
 
 " 'Deed it would," said Bessie. She had risen with a start, but 
 now she knelt again and held her steaming blouse before the fire. 
 
 Stowell took off his cap and ulster and dropped them on to a 
 chair. Then he walked about the room, trying to keep his eyes 
 from the girl, and to fill the difficult silence by talking on indiffer- 
 ent subjects — other storms he had seen in other countries. 
 
 After a while the thunder went off in the direction of Ireland, 
 its echo becoming fainter and fainter in the sonority of the sea. 
 
 "*It's gone — now I can go," he said. 
 
92 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 But hardly had he taken up his cap again when the rain, which 
 had ceased for a moment, came in a sudden torrent. 
 
 " Only a thunder shower — it will soon be over," he said. 
 
 But the rain went on and on. Good Lord, were the very forces 
 of nature conspiring to keep him there all night? 
 
 It was half -past one by the clock on the mantelpiece, and the 
 rain was still pelting on the pavement of the street outside with a 
 sound like that of an army in retreat. Stowell was feeling alter- 
 nately hot and cold, and the voice within him was saying, " Must 
 you go? You would be drenched through before you got back 
 from Mrs. Quayle's, and the girl would be as wet in getting there 
 as if you had dropped her into the sea." After a few minutes 
 more he said, 
 
 " Bessie, I'm afraid we shall have to give up the idea of going 
 to Mrs. Quayle's." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " But you can stay here, and I can go over to the Mitre." 
 
 " No, no." 
 
 " It's nothing — only two yards away." 
 
 Johnny Kelly, the boots, slept on the ground floor — he could 
 get him up without ringing the bell. Of course he would have 
 to tell the old man some cock-and-bull story — ^that he had lost 
 his key or something. 
 
 " But it's the very thing. I wonder I didn't think of it before.'' 
 
 He half hoped and half feared she might make some further 
 protest. But she did not, so he picked up his cap and ulster and 
 was making for the door when he thought of tiie gas. Would 
 Bessie, who had been brought up in a thatched cottage, know how 
 to put it out ? 
 
 " Well, no, no," she stammered. 
 
 " It's quite simple. You turn the tap, so .... " 
 
 He had to kneel by her side to show her, and he was feeling 
 the warm glow he had felt in the glen. 
 
 " But not being used of it .... " 
 
 " Then I know — the reading-lamp ! " 
 
 He leapt up to light it, and having done so, he turned out the 
 branch under the white globe, saying, with a laugh, it was lucky 
 he had thought of the lamp, for if old Johnny had seen the light 
 in the window the story of the key would have sounded thin 
 wouldn't it? 
 
 Then she laughed too, and they laughed together, but their 
 laughter broke into a sharp and breathless silence. 
 
 He carried the lamp into the bedroom, put it on the table by the 
 bedside and then pulled down the white window-blind, breaking 
 
THE CALL OF TEE BALLAUOARS 93 
 
 the cord by the tug of his trembling fingers. He was feeling as if 
 another storm, a storm of emotions, were now thundering within 
 him. " Must you go.? " "You must! You shall! Good Lord, 
 could a man of any conscience .... Never ! Never ! " 
 
 When he returned to the sitting-room Bessie had risen to her 
 feet. She was standing at the opposite side of the mantelpiece 
 and the intoxicating red light of the fire was over her. Stowell 
 thought he had never seen anything so beautiful. But he could 
 not trust himself to look twice. 
 
 " You'll be all right here, Bessie," he said, in a loud voice, 
 snatching up his coat and cap and making for the door. " You 
 can let yourself out of the house as early as you Hke in the morn- 
 ing; and if you decide to go back to that damned old devil at 
 Baldromma you can tell him from me where you passed the night, 
 and I'll stand up for you — ^why shouldn't I ? " 
 
 Then he heard a breathless cry behind him, and then the words, 
 
 " Must you go.'' " 
 
 He stopped and turned. Was it Bessie who had spoken? She 
 had taken a step towards him, was breathing irregularly and look- 
 ing at him with gleaming eyes. 
 
 He felt as if the floor were rocking under his feet, as if the 
 walls were reeling round him, as if he were seeing the face of 
 woman for the first time. 
 
 At the next moment they were clasped in each other's arms. 
 
 CHAPTER TEN 
 
 THE CALL OP THE BALLAMOARS 
 
 " What a mistake ! What a hideous blunder ! " 
 
 Stowell, who had slept little, was awakening as from a bad 
 dream. A duU lead-coloured light was filtering through the white 
 window-blind. 
 
 He could not help seeing it — Bessie was not as pretty as he had 
 thought. There was something common about her beauty when 
 she was asleep which had been effaced by her eyes while she 
 was awake. 
 
 Ashamed to look any longer he stepped into the sitting-room. 
 A close odour hung in the air. The gas fire was still burning, and 
 Bessie's blouse was lying, where she had flung it, on the floor. 
 With a sense of moral and physical sufi'ocation, he went down- 
 stairs and out into the streets. 
 
 The morning was fine and the dawn was breaking, but the town 
 was still asleep. So great was the upheaval within himself that in 
 
94 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 some vague way he expected everything to look changed. But no, 
 everything was the same — ^the shops, the signs, the lamps, which 
 had not yet been put out. There was no sound except that of his 
 own footsteps on the pavement, and to deaden this he walked in 
 the middle of the streets. 
 
 He wanted to be alone, to leave the town behind him. Turning 
 northward he crossed the harbour bridge and made for the red pier 
 which stood out into the bay with a light-house at the end of it. 
 
 The tide hummed far off on the shore. It was the bottom of 
 the ebb. Trading schooners were lying half on their sides in the 
 mud. Seagulls were calling over it. Sand, slime, sea-wrack and 
 the broken refuse of the town lay uncovered at the harbour's 
 mouth, and the last draught of the ebbing water was playing about 
 them with a guttural sound. 
 
 When he came to the light-house he saw that some fragments 
 of stone and glass were lying about, but his mind was too confused 
 to ask itself what had happened. He sat down on the light-house 
 steps, looked down into the harbour-basin and tried to think. 
 
 Good Lord, what a fool he had been ! To ask the girl into his 
 /i*ooms, being who and what she was, alone, in the middle of the 
 night, j ust after he had formed the resolution to go home and put 
 himself out of the reach of temptation .... what a fool ! 
 
 He thought of the stories people had told of him and how he 
 had justified the very ugliest and worst of them .... what 
 a fool ! 
 
 He remembered what he had said to Janet, that no girl on the 
 island or in the world had ever come to any harm through him, 
 or ever should. That was only a little while ago and now .... 
 what a fool! 
 
 He recalled the white heat of his indignation against Dan 
 Baldromma for what he had done to his step-daughter. That 
 was only last night, and now he himself .... what a fool! 
 What a fool! 
 
 Then the sense of his folly gave way to a sense of shame. 
 Down to yesterday he had lived a decent life. Reckless, heedless, 
 careless, stupid perhaps, but decent anyway. And now .... 
 what shame ! 
 
 The light was then clearing, and raising his eyes he saw on the 
 south beach a one-story fisherman's cottage from which the smoke 
 was rising. It was Mrs. Quayle's cottage. She was making 
 her early breakfast, and presently she would go to his room to 
 make his. He shuddered at a vision of what she would find there 
 — ^the close air, the gas fire, the girl's blouse on the floor, the girl 
 herself .... how degrading it all was ! 
 
THE GALL OF THE BALLAM0AR8 95 
 
 He saw Dan Baldromma ferreting out the facts (as of course 
 he would, having to find excuses for his own barbarity), and then 
 blazoning them abroad to his own disgrace and the discredit of his 
 class. Or worse — a hundredfold worse — holding them as a threat 
 over his father. What a disgusting bog he had strayed into ! 
 
 He saw the truth leaking out one way or other and putting an 
 end to his career at the bar. It was not the same here as in the 
 greater communities, where a man might commit a fault and then 
 submerge it in the fathomless tide of life. In this little island, 
 where everybody knew everybody, it was the man himself who 
 was submerged. 
 
 If the story of last night became known to anyone it would 
 become known to everyone, from the Governor himself to the 
 meanest beggar on the roads. No position of honour or authority 
 would ever be possible to him after that. The black fact would 
 be a clanking chain which he would have to drag after him as 
 long as he lived. 
 
 When he thought of this — that the event of one night might 
 alter the whole course of his life, and bring scandal upon the 
 Deemster, and that it was due to a miserable accident in the first 
 instance — the accident of meeting Bessie on the streets after mid- 
 night — he was filled with a fierce and consuming rage, and for one 
 bad moment he had an almost uncontrollable desire to return to 
 his rooms and drive her out of them. 
 
 That horrified him. He hated himself for it, and after a while 
 his self-pity gave place to pity for the girl. 
 
 "Good heavens, what are my risks compared to hers?" he 
 asked himself. 
 
 The poor girl had so many excuses. Back in the past, before 
 she was born even, she had been condemned and branded, and the 
 damned hypocritical world had been deepening the injury every 
 day since. If he had found her in the streets it was only because 
 her brutal step-father had turned her from his door. And if she 
 had come into his rooms it was because she had no other shelter. 
 
 She had been a good girl too. No other man had been allowed 
 to lead her astray. He could hear her voice still, repeating his 
 own words after him : " You mill stand up for me, won't you .'' " 
 ■and he had promised that he would'. He could not cast her oiF now 
 without being a scoundrel. Could the son of Deemster Stowell 
 be a scoundrel? " 
 
 "No, by God!" 
 
 A few minutes later he saw himself going back to Bessie and 
 saying, " Look here, my dear girl. It was neither your fault nor 
 
96 THE MASTER OF MAX 
 
 mine, but take this, and this, and remember if you ever find it is 
 not enough, there'll be more where that comes from." 
 
 But no, he could not do that either. If he made the girl take 
 money he would put her in the position of a harlot; and once a 
 woman accepted that position there was no bottom to the un- 
 guessed depths to which she might descend. 
 
 Bessie's future stood up before him like a spectre. Other men, 
 each more brutal than the last, quarrels, violence, all the miseries 
 of such a life — until some day, perhaps, some hideous fact with 
 which he had had nothing to do, would look at him with accusing 
 eyes and say, 
 
 " You are responsible for this, because you were the first." 
 
 Down to that moment he had been thinking of the event of last 
 night as a blunder, but now he saw it as a crime. To prevent the 
 possible consequences of that crime he must keep the girl with him, 
 take care of her, protect her as the saying was. 
 
 But no, that was impossible also. Justification for such a rela- 
 tion there might be — ^no doubt was — where law or custom or other 
 impediment were keeping apart a man and woman who belonged 
 together. But to put a girl into the position of a mistress, because 
 she was unworthy to be a wife, and to hide her away behind a 
 curtain of duplicity and lies, was to destroy her body and soul. 
 
 Again Bessie's future stood up before him as a spectre — that 
 high-spirited girl who, but for him, might have married a decent 
 man of her own class, and held her head proud, declining, after a 
 few vain months of fine clothes and idleness, to the condition of a 
 slattern, and going down to the dirt and degeneration of drink. 
 
 And then he saw that what had happened last night was not 
 merely a crime — it was a sin. 
 
 But what was he to do.? What? What.? 
 
 Just at that moment the sun had come up out of the sea in 
 crimsoning clouds, and the white mist that is the shroud of night 
 had risen above the houses of the town, the steeples of the churches, 
 the hills and the mountain tops, and was vanishing away in that 
 new birth of morning light that is the world's daily resurrection. 
 
 " I know! I know! " he thought, and he leapt to his feet. 
 
 He had remembered something that Janet had said about the 
 men of his family — ^that it had always been a kind of religion 
 with them to do the right. Four hundred years of the Ballamoars 
 and not a stain on the name of any of them ! That was something 
 to be born to, wasn't it? It was worth all the titles and honours 
 the world had in it. 
 
 And then, in that moment of strange and solemn splendour, 
 when the things of the other world appear to be as real as the 
 
THE CALL OF THE BALLAMOARS 97 
 
 things of this one^ it seemed as if the Ballamoars were calling to 
 him ! Four hundred years of the dead Ballamoars were calling to 
 the last of their sons — " Do the right! " 
 
 " I must marry that girl," he told himself. 
 
 But at the next moment there came, with the shock of a blow, 
 the memory of his mother. 
 
 Marriage had always been associated in his mind with such 
 different conditions. Such a different woman; somebody who 
 would be your equal, perhaps your superior ; somebody who would 
 sustain and inspire you; somebody who would help you feel the 
 throbbing pulse of life, and listen to all the suffering hearts that 
 beat; somebody who, if she had to go before you, would leave 
 behind her, for as long as your life should last, the fragrance of 
 flowers and the halo of a holy saint. 
 
 That was marriage as he had always thought of it. And now 
 this girl — illiterate, inadequate, with that mother, that father 
 .... in the presence of the Deemster .... the home of Isobel 
 Stanley .... Oh, God! 
 
 Then a mocking voice seemed to say, 
 
 " Good Lord, what a joke! If every man who ever made a 
 tragic blunder (there have been hundreds of thousands of you) 
 had acted on your exaggerated sense of responsibility, what a mess 
 the old world would be in by this time ! Why, there is scarcely a 
 man alive who would not laugh at you and call you a fool." 
 
 " Let them," he thought, for louder at that moment than any 
 other voice was the voice that cried, 
 
 " Do the right! " 
 
 The marriage need not take place immediately. Bessie could 
 be educated. She was bright; there was no saying how quickly 
 she might develop. That would soften the blow to his father. 
 And anyhow the Deemster would see that he was trying to be true 
 to his blood, his race. 
 
 " Yes, yes, I must do the right; whatever it may cost me." 
 
 But then came another chilling thought. Love ! There could 
 be no love in such a marriage. This brought, with the pain of a 
 bleeding wound, the memory of Fenella. 
 
 In spite of all he had said to himself through so many years 
 he had never really been reconciled to the loss of her. Down in 
 some dark and secret chamber of his consciousness there had 
 always been a phantom hope that notwithstanding her devotion to 
 her work for women, and the dedication to celibacy (as stern as the 
 consecration of the veil) which she believed to be demanded by it, 
 Fenella would return to the island, and his great love would 
 be rewarded. 
 7 
 
98 THE MASTER OP MAN 
 
 That had been the real cause of his idleness. He had been 
 waitingj waiting, waiting for Fenella to come back and make it 
 worth while .... and now . ... by his own act .... the 
 consequences of it ... . Oh, God ! Oh, God ! 
 
 For the first time, save once since he was a child, he felt tears 
 in his eyes, but he brushed them away impatiently. 
 
 " It's too late to think of that now," he thought. 
 
 A duty claimed him. He must put such dreams away. Be- 
 sides where was the merit of doing the right if you had not to 
 sacrifice something ? Love might be the light of life, but men and 
 women all the world over had for one reason or other to marry 
 without it. Millions of hearts in all ages were like old battlefields, 
 with dead things, which nobody knew of, lying about in the dark 
 places. And yet the world went on. 
 
 He might have struggles, heart-aches, heart-hunger, and more 
 than he could do to keep the pot boiling, with the fire out and the 
 hearth cold, but nobody need know anything about that. This 
 girl need never know. Fenella need never know. Nobody need 
 know. It was a matter for himself only. 
 
 " Yes, yes, I must do the right," he kept on saying, " what- 
 ever it may cost me." 
 
 Having arrived at this decision he felt an immense relief and 
 got up to go back. 
 
 The windows of the town were reflecting the morning sun and 
 the smoke was rising from the chimneys. He saw an elderly 
 woman, with a little shawl pinned over her head and under her 
 chin, trudging along past the storm-cone station on the other side 
 of the harbour. It was Mrs. Qtiayle, on her way to his rooms. 
 But he shuddered no longer at the thought of her. She was a good 
 creature and when she heard what he meant to do she would help 
 him with the care of Bessie. 
 
 As he walked towards the town he told himself he had another 
 reason now for setting to work in earnest — ^he had to justify what 
 he was going to do in the eyes of the island and of the Deemster. 
 Therefore the event of last night might be a good thing after all, 
 little as he had thought so. 
 
 At the mouth of the bridge he met the harbour-master, whose 
 face wore a look of dismay. 
 
 " This is a ter'ble shocking thing that has happened in the 
 night, Mr. Stowell." 
 
 Stowell caught his breath and asked "What?" 
 
 " Why, the light-house. Struck by lightning in the storm. 
 Didn't you see it, Sir.^ " 
 
 " Oh yes, of course, certainly." 
 
THE CALL OF THE BALLAM0AB8 99 
 
 " I'm just after telegraphing to the Governor and thp Receiver- 
 General. The old light has gone out with the tide, Sir, and it will 
 be middlin' bad for the boats coming in at night until we get a 
 new one." 
 
 " It will. Captain, it will. Good-morning! " 
 His eyes were positively shining with j oy as he walked sharply 
 through the town, and as he opened his door he was saying to 
 himself again, 
 
 " I must do the right, whatever it may cost roe." 
 He was closing the door on the inside when he saw in the 
 letter-box the letterfwhich had caught his eye last night. Now 
 he could open it. 
 
 It was marked " Immediate." Recognising the Ballamoar 
 crest and Janet's handwriting, he trembled and turned pale. 
 
 " A line in frantic haste, dear, to say I have just heard 
 from Miss Green that Fenella is crossing by the steamer due 
 to arrive at eight o'clock this evening. She has left her Set- 
 tlement and is coming back to stay in the island for good. I 
 thought you might like to go up to Douglas to meet her. 
 Trust me, dear, she will be simply delighted. 
 
 " Robbie Creer is taking this into town by hand, so that 
 
 you may receive it at the earliest possible moment. I am 
 
 frightfully excited, and oh, so glad and happy." 
 
 StoweU reeled and laid hold of the hand-rail. And when 
 
 at length he went upstairs he staggered as if he were carrying a 
 
 (HTUshing load. 
 
 END OF FIRST BOOK 
 
SECOND BOOK 
 THE RECKONING 
 
 CHAPTEE ELEVEN 
 
 THE RETURN OF FENELLA 
 
 " Fate has played me a scurvy trick," thought Stowell. " No 
 matter! I'll go on." 
 
 Within an hour he settled Bessie CoUister temporarily with 
 Mrs. Quayle. He told her they were to be married ultimately, but 
 meantime (that she might feel more comfortable in her new con- 
 dition) he intended to find some suitable place in which she would 
 complete her education. 
 
 He tried to say this tenderly so as not to hurt the girl's pride, 
 and even affectionately, so as to convey the idea that it was she who 
 would be doing the favour. But a certain shallowness in Bessie's 
 nature disappointed him. While he unfolded his plans she said 
 " Yes " and " yes," looking alternately surprised and startled> 
 but it was with a troubled face, rather than a glad one, that she 
 went off with Mrs. Quayle, whose own face was grave also. 
 
 Two days later Stowell went up to see Gell. He had deter- 
 mined to say nothing about his intimate relations with Bessie. 
 Why should he ? If it was his duty to marry the girl, it was equally 
 his duty to protect her honour — ^the honour of the woman who 
 was to become his wife. 
 
 Gell was astounded. He listened, with a twinkling eye, to 
 Stowell's story of how he had come upon Bessie in the street, after 
 midnight, friendless and homeless, being shut out by her abomi- 
 nable father, and how he had taken her to Mrs. Quayle's. But 
 when Stowell went on to say that, feeling a certain responsibility 
 for the girl's misfortime, having been a principal cause of it (by 
 keeping her out too late at night) and having seen something of 
 her since, he had come to like and even to love her, and had made 
 up his mind to marry her, Gell broke into exclamations of aston- 
 ishment which cut Stowell to the quick. 
 
 " But Bessie? Bessie Collister? Do you really mean it? " 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Well .... it is not for me to say why not. She was a sort 
 of old flame of my own, you know." 
 100 
 
TEE BETU\KN OF FENELLA 101 
 
 Stowell flinched at this, but went on with his story. For Bessie's 
 sake he had decided to put back the marriage until she could be 
 educated a little. And if Gell knew of any school, not too well 
 known, and far enough away .... 
 
 " Why, yes, of course I do," said Gell. 
 
 It was that of the Misses Brown at Derby Haven — ^a remote 
 village at the south of the island. Two old maids who had for- 
 merly been governesses to his sisters. Only yesterday the elder of 
 them had written asking if there was anything he could put in 
 her way. It looked like the very thing. At all events he would 
 go down and see. And if Stowell wished to keep things quiet for a 
 while, as of course he would, if it was only for the sake of the 
 Deemster, he was ready to act as go-between. 
 
 " What a good fellow you are, Alick! " 
 
 " Not a bit ! It's no more than you would have done for me — 
 less than you've done already." 
 
 Next day Stowell had a letter from Gell saying he had 
 arranged everything. The Misses Brown, who had no other pupil 
 at present, would be only too delighted. Bessie might be sent up 
 at any time and he would see her to her destination. 
 
 Within a week the girl was despatched to Douglas, with such 
 belongings as Mrs. Quayle had bought for her, and in due course 
 Stowell had a second letter from Gell, saying, 
 
 " It's all right. I've delivered the goods ! Of course I made 
 no unnecessary explanations, and old Miss Brown, smelling a 
 secret, thinks I am to be the happy man. What larks ! But I 
 don't mind if you don't. Bessie looked a little wistful when I 
 came away, so I had to promise to run down and see her some- 
 times. That's all right, I suppose ? " 
 
 Then Stowell set to work. Letting it be known that he was 
 willing to accept cases of all kinds it was not long before he was 
 fully occupied. Common assault, drunkenness, petty larceny — he 
 took anything and everything that came his way. He did his 
 work well. In a little while people began to whisper that he was 
 a chip of the old block and to employ the Deemster's son was to 
 ensure success. 
 
 Meantime he saw nothing of Fenella. Having made up his 
 mind to do the right thing he tried his best to banish all thought 
 of her. But everybody was talking of the Governor's daughter. 
 She was beautiful; she was charming; she was wonderful! Oh, 
 the joy of it all ! But the pain and the misery of it, also ! 
 
 One day he met Janet driving in the street, and after she had 
 asked if- he had received her letter, and he had answered no, it had 
 arrived too late, she said. 
 
102 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " But of course you'll call, dear. I'm sure she'll expect it." 
 
 The Governor sent out invitations to a garden-party in honour 
 of his daughter's return home, but Stowell excused himself on the 
 ground of urgent work. A little later Fenella herself issued invi- 
 tations to a meeting towards the establishment of a League for the 
 Protection of Women, but again Stowell excused himself — a case 
 in the Courts. 
 
 Still later he went out to Ballamoar to see his father, whom he 
 had neglected of late, and the Deemster (who looked older and 
 feebler and had a duller light in his great but melancholy eyes) 
 flamed up with a kind of youth when he talked of Fenella. 
 
 " It's extraordinary," he said. " Do you know, Victor, she 
 is the only woman I have ever met who has reminded me of your 
 mother? And if I close my eyes when she is speaking, I can 
 almost persuade myself it is the same." 
 
 Stowell began to think he hated the very name of Fenella. 
 But there were moments when he felt that he could have given the 
 whole world, if he had possessed it, just to look upon her face. 
 
 One day Gell came to " report progress " about Bessie. She 
 was getting on all right, but " longing " a little in those unaccus- 
 tomed surroundings, so he had to go down in the evenings some- 
 times to take her out for walks. 
 
 " We'll have to be careful about that, though," he said, " for 
 what do you think? " 
 
 " What? " 
 
 " Dan Baldromma suspects me, and is having me watched." 
 
 Stowell was startled and ashamed. Where had his head been 
 that he had not thought of this before ? He had got up from his 
 desk and was looking vacantly out of the window when he became 
 aware that the Governor's big blue landau was drawing up in 
 the street below. 
 
 At the next moment there was a light step on the stairs, and at 
 the next the door of his room was opened by his young clerk, and 
 through the doorway came someone who was like a vision from 
 a thousand of his dreams, but now grown in her stately height out 
 of the beauty of a bewitching girl into the full bloom of womanly 
 loveliness. 
 
 It was Fenella Stanley. 
 
 II 
 
 " You wouldn't come to see me, so I've come to see you." 
 Stowell never knew what answer he made when he took her 
 outstretched hand; but after a moment he said, 
 
THE RETURN OF FENELLA 103 
 
 " You know my friend Gell? " 
 
 " Indeed I do ... . And how's Isabella ? , . , . And Ade- 
 laide? .... And Verbena? " 
 
 While FeneUa was talking to Gell, Stowell had time to look 
 at her. She was the most beautiful woman in the world ! Those 
 dark eyes, beaming with bluish opal; those lips like an opening 
 rose ; that spacious forehead, with its brown hair shot with gold — 
 they had not told him the half. 
 
 Gell made shift to answer for the sisters he had not seen for 
 months, and then went off. 
 
 And then FeneUa, taking the chair that Stowell had set for her, 
 and dropping her voice to a deeper note, said, 
 
 " And now to business. You know we've established on the 
 island a branch of the Women's Protection League? " 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " One of its objects is to protect women from the law." 
 
 " The law? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, the law," said FeneUa smiling. " Your law can be 
 very cruel sometimes — especiaUy to women. But our first case is 
 not one of that kind. It is a case in which the law, if rightly 
 guided, can best do justice by showing mercy." 
 
 A young wife in Castletown had killed her husband. She had 
 [already appeared at the High BailiiF's Court and been committed 
 jfor trial to the Court of General Gaol Delivery — ^the Manx Court 
 lof Assize. 
 
 " There seems to be no question of her guilt," said FeneUa, " so 
 we can neither expect nor desire that she should escape punish- 
 ment altogether. The poor thing — she's scarcely more than a girl 
 ' — ^wiU say nothing in self-defence, but when we remember how 
 the soul of a woman shrinks from a crime of that kind we feel that 
 she must have suffered some great injustice, some secret wrong, 
 which, if it could be brought out in Court . . . . " 
 
 " I see," said Stowell. 
 
 FeneUa paused a moment and then said, in a voice that was 
 becoming tremulous, 
 
 " Therefore we have thought that for this case we need an 
 \advocate who loves women as women and can see into the heart 
 of a woman when she's down and done, because God has made 
 jhim so. And that's why. . . ." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " That's why I've brought this first case to you." 
 
 StoweU could scarcely speak to answer her. But after a 
 poment he stammered that he would do his utmost; and then 
 
104 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Fenella brought out of her hand-bag some printed papers that -were 
 a report of the preliminary inquiry. 
 
 " I'll read them to-night," he said, putting them into his 
 breast pocket. 
 
 " Of course you'll require to see the prisoner ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " She hasn't opened her lips yet, but you must get her to 
 speak." 
 
 " I'll try." 
 
 " That's all for the present," said Fenella, rising; and at the 
 next moment she was smiling again, and her eyes were beginning 
 to glow. 
 
 " So this is where you live? " 
 
 " No, this is my office ; I live at the other side of the house." 
 
 " Really.? I wonder . . . . " 
 
 " You would like to see my living rooms ? " 
 
 " I'd love to. I've always wanted to see how yonag bache- 
 lors live alone." 
 
 " Come this way then." 
 
 Stowell had not realised what he was doing for himself until 
 he was on the landing, with the key in the lock, and Fenella be- 
 hind him, but then came a stabbing memory of another woman in 
 the same position. 
 
 " Come in," he cried (his voice was quivering now), and draw- 
 ing up the Venetian blind he let in a flood of sunshine and the soft 
 song of the sea. 
 
 " What a comfy little room ! " said Fenella. 
 
 As she looked around her eyes seemed to light up everything. 
 
 " It's easy to see that you've been racing all over the earth, 
 sir. That Neapolitan girl on the mantelpiece came from Rome, 
 didn't she?" 
 
 " She did." 
 
 " And that lamp from Venice, and that silver bowl from 
 Cairo, and that cedar-wood photograph frame from Sorrento? " 
 
 " Quite right." 
 
 " Books ! Books ! Books ! All law books, I see. Not a 
 human thing among them, I'll be bound. And yet they're all 
 terribly, fearfully, tragically hmnan, I suppose? " 
 
 " That's so." 
 
 " Gas fire ? So you have a gas fire for the cold wet nights ? " 
 
 " Yes, a bachelor has to have . . . . " But another stabbing 
 memory came, and he could get no further. 
 
 " And so this is where you sit alone until all hours of the night 
 — reading, reading, reading? " 
 
THE RETURN OF FENELLA 105 
 
 He tried to speak but could not. She glanced at the bed- 
 room door which stood open, and said, with eyes that seemed 
 to laugh, 
 
 " Is that your .... ? " 
 
 He nodded, breathing deeply, and trying to turn his eyes away. 
 
 " May I perhaps . . . . ? " 
 
 " If you would like to." 
 
 " What fun ! " 
 
 She stood in the doorway, looking into the room for a moment, 
 with the sunlight on her bronze-brown hair, and then, turning 
 back to him with the warmer sunshine of her smile, she said, 
 
 " Well, you young bachelors know how to make yourselves 
 comfortable, I must say. But I seem to scent a woman about 
 this place." 
 
 He found himself stammering: " There's my housekeeper, 
 Mrs. Quayle. She comes every morning . . . . " 
 
 " Ah, that accounts for it." 
 
 She walked downstairs by his side, and said, as he opened the 
 carriage door for her, 
 
 " You'll do your best for that poor girl? " 
 
 " My very best." 
 
 " And by the way, the Deemster has invited the Governor and 
 me to Ballamoar. We go on Monday and stay a week. Of course 
 you'll be there? " 
 
 " I'm afraid . . . . " 
 
 " Oh, but you must." 
 
 " I'll . . . . I'U try." 
 
 " Au revoir ! " 
 
 He stood, after the carriage had gone until it had crossed to the 
 other side of the square, where, from the shade of the inside (it 
 had been closed in the meantime) Fenella reached her smiling face 
 forward and bowed to him again. Then he went back to his room 
 — now empty, silent and dead. 
 
 Oh, God, why had that senseless thing been allowed to happen ! 
 Lord, what a little step in front of him on life's highway a man 
 was permitted to see ! 
 
 Stowell did not return to his office that afternoon. His young 
 clerk locked up, left the keys, went downstairs and shut the door 
 after him, but still he sat in the gathering darkness like a man 
 nursing an incurable wound. He would never forgive himself for 
 allowing Fenella to come into his rooms — never ! 
 
 " You fool ! " he thought, leaping up at last. " What's done is 
 done, and all you've got to do now is to stand up to it." 
 
106 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Then he lit the gas and taking the report out of his pocket he 
 began to read it. What a shock ! As, little by little, through the 
 thick-set hedge of question and answer, the story of the wretched 
 young wife came out to him, he saw, to his horror, that it was 
 the story of Bessie CoUister as he had imagined it might be if 
 he deserted her. 
 
 What devil out of hell had brought this case to him as a 
 punishment.'' By the hand of Fenella, too! No matter! If 
 the unseen powers were concerning themselves with his miserable 
 misdoings perhaps it was only to strengthen him in his resolution — 
 to compel him to go on. 
 
 Suffer .'' Of course he would suffer ! It was only right that 
 he should suffer. And as for the haunting presence of Fenella's 
 face in that room, there was a way to banish that. 
 
 So, sitting at his desk, he wrote, 
 
 " Dear Bessie, — Please go into Castletown to-morrow and 
 have your photograph taken, and send it on to me imme- 
 diately." 
 
 After that he felt more at ease and sat down before the fire to 
 study his case. 
 
 Ill 
 
 " I must not go to Ballamoar while she's there. It would be 
 madness," thought Stowell. 
 
 To escape from the temptation he made a still deeper plunge 
 into the cauldron of work, going to Courts all over the island and 
 winning his cases everywhere. 
 
 Twice he went to Castle Rushen to see the young wife in her 
 cell. What happened there was made known to the frequenters of 
 the " Manx Arms " by Tommy Vondy, the gaoler. Tommy, who 
 had been coachman at Ballamoar in the " Stranger's " days, and 
 appointed to his present post by the Deemster's influence, was 
 accustomed to scenes of loud lamentation. But having listened 
 outside the cell door, and even taken a peep or two through the 
 grill, he was " free to confess " that " the young Master " could 
 not get a word out of the prisoner. 
 
 As the week of Fenella's visit to Ballamoar was coming to a 
 close, Stowell's nervousness became feverish. One day, as he was 
 walking down the street, a dog-cart drew up by his side and a 
 voice called, 
 
 " Mr. Stowell ! " 
 
 It was Dr. Clucas, a jovial, rubicund fuU-bearded man of 
 middle age, not liable to alarms. 
 
THE XETViRN OF FENELLA 107 
 
 " I've just been out to Ballamoar to see the Deemster, and I 
 think perhaps you ought to keep in touch with him." 
 
 " Is my father ....?" 
 
 " Oh no, nothing serious, no immediate danger. Still, at his 
 age, you know . . . . " 
 
 " I'U go home to-morrow," said Stowell. 
 
 On the following afternoon he walked to Ballamoar. It was a 
 bright day in early September. There was a hot hum of bees on 
 the gorse hedges and the light rattle of the reaper in the fields, but 
 inside the tall elms there was the usual silence, unbroken even by 
 the cawing of the rooks i 
 
 The house, too, when he reached it, seemed to be deserted. 
 The front door was open but the rooms were empty. 
 
 " Janet ! " he cried, but there came no answer. Then he heard 
 a burst of laughter from the back, and going through the dining- 
 room to the piazza, he saw what was happening. 
 
 The yellow corn field which had been waving to a light breeze 
 when he was there a fortnight before, was now bare save for the 
 stooks which were dotted over part of it, and in the corner nearest 
 to the mansion house a group of persons stood waiting for the 
 cutting of the last armful of the crop — ^the Deemster, leaning on 
 his stick; the Governor smoking his briar-root pipe; Parson 
 Cowley, with his round red face ; Janet in her lace cap ; tJie house 
 servants in their white aprons; Robbie Creer, in his sleeve waist- 
 coat; young Robbie, stripped to the shirt; a large company of 
 farm lads and farm girls, and — Fenella, in a sunbonnet and with 
 a sickle in her hand. It was the Melliah — ^the harvest home. 
 
 " Now for it," cried Robbie, " strike them from their legs, 
 miss." And at a stroke from her sickle Fenella brought the last 
 sheaf to the ground. 
 
 Then there was a shout of " Hurrah for the Melliah! " and 
 at the next moment Robbie was dipping mugs into a pail and hand- 
 ing them round to the males of the company, saying, when he 
 came to the Parson, 
 
 " The Parson was the first man that ever threw water in my 
 face " (meaning his baptism), " but there's a jug of good Manx 
 ale for his own." 
 
 The rough jest was received with laughter, and then the 
 Deemster, being called for, spoke a few words with his calm 
 dignity, leaning both hands on his stick: 
 
 Custom must be indulged with custom, or custom will weep.' 
 So says our old Manx proverb. The sun is going west on me, and 
 I cannot hope to see many more Melliahs. But I trust my dear 
 
108 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 son, when he comes after me, will encourage you to keep up all 
 that is good in our old traditions." 
 
 Then there was another shout, followed by some wild horse- 
 play, with the farm-boys vaulting the stocks and the girls stretch- 
 ing straw ropes to trip them up, while the Deemster and his 
 company turned back to the house. 
 
 Fenella, coming along in her sun bonnet (a little awry) and 
 with her sheaf over her arm, was the first to see Victor, and she 
 cried, 
 
 " At last! The Stranger has come at last! " 
 
 Janet was in raptures, and the Deemster said, while his slow 
 eyes smiled, 
 
 " You are sleeping at home to-night, Victor? " 
 
 " Yes, father." 
 
 " Good! " 
 
 After saluting everybody Victor found himself walking by 
 Fenella's side, and she was saying in a low voice, with a side- 
 long glance, 
 
 " And how do you like me in a sun bonnet, sir ? You rather 
 fancy sun bonnets, I believe." But at that moment a wasp had 
 settled on her arm and he was too busy removing it to reply. 
 
 At dinner that night Stowell found himself drawn into the 
 home atmosphere as never before since his days as a student-at-law. 
 The dining-table was bright with silver and many candles, and the 
 wood fire, crackling on the hearth,- filled the low-ceiled room with 
 the resinous odour of the pine. 
 
 Everybody except himself and the doctor (who had arrived as 
 they were sitting down) had dressed. The beauty of Fenella, 
 who came in with the Deemster, seemed to be softened and height- 
 ened by her pale pink evening gown — like the beauty of a flower- 
 bud when it opens and becomes a rose. 
 
 With Janet's complete approval Fenella had taken control of 
 everything, and as Victor entered she said, 
 
 " That's your place, Mr. Stranger," putting him at the end of 
 the table, with Janet and the doctor on either side. 
 
 She herself sat by the Deemster, whose powerful face wore an 
 expression of suiFering, although, as often as she spoke to him, 
 he turned to her and smiled. 
 
 " She's lovelier than ever, really," whispered Janet, and then 
 (with that clairvoyance in the heart of a woman which enables 
 her to read mysteries without knowing it) , " What a pity she ever 
 went away ! " 
 
 As a sequel to the Melliah the talk during dinner was of the 
 ancient customs and old life of the island. The Deemster, who 
 
TEE RETUiBN OF FENELLA 109 
 
 could have told most, said little, but the Governor spoke of the 
 riots of the Manx people (especially the copper riot when they 
 wanted to burn down Government House), and Janet of the roy- 
 sterers and haffsters of the Athols who kept racehorses and fought 
 duels — her mother in her girlhood had seen the blue mark of the 
 bullet on the dead forehead of one of them. 
 
 Such sweetness, such nobility, the men, the women, and the 
 manners! Fenella joined in the talk with great animation, but 
 StoweU was silent and in pain. Here they were, his family and 
 friend's, without a suspicion that some day, perhaps soon, he would 
 bring quite another atmosphere into this house, this room. Visions 
 of the mill, the miller, his wife and his daughter rose before him, 
 and he felt like a traitor. 
 
 But it was not until they went into the library (it was library 
 and drawing-rooom combined) that he knew the full depth of his 
 humiliation. The Deemster, who was by the fire, asked FeneUa to 
 sing to them, and she did so, sitting at the piano, with Doctor 
 Clucas (who in his youth had been the best dancer in the island) 
 tripping about her with old-fashioned gallantry to find the music 
 and tiu-n over the leaves. 
 
 " This is for the Stranger," she said' (cutting deeper than she 
 knew), and then followed a series of old Manx ballads, some of 
 them like the wailing of the wind among the rushes on the Cur- 
 raghs, and some like the dancing of the water in the harbour 
 before a fresh breeze on a summer day. 
 
 Then the doctor brought out from a cupboard a few faded 
 sheets inscribed " Isobel StoweU," and FeneUa sang " Allan 
 Water " and " Annie Laurie." And then the Deemster closed his 
 eyes, and it seemed to Victor who sat on a hassock by his side, that 
 his father's blue-veined hands trembled on his knees. 
 
 " And this is for myself," said Fenella, dropping into a deeper 
 tone as she sang: 
 
 Less than the weed that grows beside thy door .... 
 Even less am I." 
 
 Victor wanted to fly out of the room and burst into tears. But 
 just then the clock on the landing struck, and Fenella rose from 
 the piano. 
 
 " Ten o'clock ! Time to go upstairs. Deemster." 
 
 The old man seemed to like to be controlled by the young 
 woman, and leaning on her arm, he bowed all around in his stately 
 way, and permitted himself to be led from the room. 
 
 Then the Governor (being a privileged person) lit his pipe 
 with a piece of red turf from the fire, and Janet whispered to the 
 maid who had come back for the coffee-tray. 
 
lie THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " See that Mr. Victor's night-things are laid out, Jane." 
 
 But Victor himself was in the hall, helping the Doctor with his 
 overcoat, and saying, 
 
 " Can you take me back to town with you? " 
 
 " Certainly, if you'll wait at the lodge while I look in on the 
 cowman's wife." 
 
 " Why, what's this mischief you are plotting? " It was 
 Fenella coming downstairs. 
 
 The doctor explained, and Victor said, 
 
 " There's that case. It comes on soon. I must see the poor 
 woman again in the morning." 
 
 " Well, if you must, you must, and I'll go down to the gate 
 with you," said Fenella. And putting something over her head 
 she walked by his side (the doctor having gone on), taking Ms 
 arm unasked and keeping step with him. 
 
 " I was just wanting a word with you." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 It's about your father. You must really come back to live 
 with him." 
 
 " Has he asked . . . . " 
 
 " Not to say asked! ' Victor doesn't come to see me very 
 often ' — ^that's all." 
 
 " After this case is over I'll .... " 
 
 " Do. You can't think how much it will mean to him." 
 
 On the way back to Ramsey, with the lamps of the dog-cart 
 opening np the dark road in front of them, Stowell was silent, but 
 the doctor talked continuously, and always on the same subject. 
 
 " I've seen something of the ladies in my time, Mr. Stowell, 
 sir, but I really think .... yes, sir I really do think . . . . " 
 and then rapturous praises of Fenella. They rang like joy-bells 
 in Stowell's ear but struck like minute-bells also. 
 
 When he closed the street door to his chambers he found a 
 large envelope in the letter-box behind it. Bessie's photograph! 
 As he held it under the gas globe in his cold room the pictured face 
 gave him a shock. Beautiful? Yes, but there was something 
 common in its beauty which he had never observed before. 
 
 His first impulse was to hide the photograph out of sight. 
 But at the next moment he tore open the cedar-wood frame on the 
 mantelpiece, removed the portrait it contained, inserted Bessie's in 
 its place, and then put it to stand on the table by the side of his bed. 
 
 " There! That shall be the last face I see at night and the 
 first I see in the morning ! " 
 
 But oh vain and foolish thought ! With the first sleep of the 
 night another face was in his dream. 
 
I'BE DEATH OF THE DEEMSTER 111 
 
 CHAPTER TWELVE 
 
 THE DEATH OP THE DEEMSTER 
 
 The Deemster had not intended to sit at the next Court of 
 General Gaol Delivery, and had already arranged for the second 
 Deemster to take his place, but when, next morning at breakfast, 
 he heard from Fenella that Victor was to plead, he determined 
 to preside. 
 
 " I must hear Victor's first case at the General Gaol," he said. 
 
 " We shall have to be careful, then," said Dr. Clucas. " No 
 excitement, your Honour ! No more heart-strain ! " 
 
 On the morning of the trial he was up early. Janet heard him 
 humming to himself in tie conserWtory as he cut the flowers for 
 the vase in front of his young wife's picture. When he was ready 
 to go she helped him on with his overcoat, turning up the collar 
 and putting a muffler about his neck. And when young Robbie 
 came round with the dog-cart he stepped up into it with surpris- 
 ing strength. 
 
 And then Janet, who had smuggled a brandy-flask into the 
 luncheon basket at the back of the dog-cart, stood with a swollen 
 heart and watched the old man as he went oflf in the morning mist, 
 with the awakened rooks cawing over the unseen tops of the trees. 
 
 Three hours later, the Deemster arrived at Castletown. The 
 sun was up, and' there was a crowd at the castle gate. All hats 
 were off as he passed through the Judge's private passage-way to 
 the dark robing-room with its deeply recessed window. The Gov- 
 ernor, in General's uniform, was there already, for he sat also in 
 the high court of the island. 
 
 A few minutes later they were in the Court-house. It was 
 densely crowded, and all rose as they entered. But at that mo- 
 ment the Deemster was conscious of one presence only — ^his own 
 youth in wig and gown (himself as he used to be forty years before) 
 in the curved benches for the advocates immediately below. It 
 was Victor. 
 
 Then the prisoner was brought in — a forlorn-looking creature 
 of three or f our-and-twenty, not without traces of former comeli- 
 ness, but now a rag of a woman, ill-clad and slatternly. 
 
 WTien asked to plead she said nothing, therefore the customary 
 plea of Not Guilty was made for her, and without more ado the 
 Attorney-General embarked on the history of her crime. 
 
 It was not a case for refinement; the crime was palpable; it 
 had no redeeming feature, and' for the protection of life in the 
 island it called for the extreme penalty of the law. 
 
 Then, with the usual long pauses, the woman's story was raked 
 
112 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 out of the witnesses — her neighbours in the low streets that crept 
 under the Castle walls, the police and the doctor. She had been 
 an orphan from her birth, brought up at the expense of the parish 
 by a woman who had ill-treated her. As a young servant-girl she 
 had been " taken advantage of " in the big house she lived in, 
 perhaps by the footman, more probably by an officer of the regi- 
 ment then garrisoned in the town. Finally she had married the 
 dead man, lived a, cat-and-dog life with him (there was a dark 
 record of drink and assaults) and at last stabbed him to the heart 
 in a fatal quarrel and been found standing over his body with a 
 table-knife in her hand. 
 
 Stowell's cross-examination consisted of three questions only. 
 When the dead man was found had he anything in his hand? 
 " Yes, a poker," said the policeman. When the prisoner was 
 arrested were there any wounds on her? " Yes, three on the head," 
 said the doctor. Were there any wounds on the dead man's body 
 except the heart-stab from which he died? " None whatever." 
 
 " Ah ! " said the Deemster, and he reached forward to make 
 a note. 
 
 When the Court adjourned for luncheon, the case for the 
 Crown was over, and it almost seemed as if the rope of the hang- 
 man were already about the prisoner's neck. 
 
 Stowell did not leave the Court-house. He sat in his place 
 with folded arms and closed eyes. Tommy Vondy, the gaoler, 
 looked in on him sitting alone, and presently returned (from the 
 direction of the Deemster's room) with a plate of sandwiches and 
 something in a glass, but he sent back both untouched. 
 
 When the Court resumed it appeared to be still more crowded 
 and excited than before. As the Deemster took his seat, he saw 
 that his son's face was strongly illumined by the sun (which was 
 now streaming from a lantern light in the roof) and that it was 
 pale and drawn. Immediately behind Victor a lady was sitting — 
 it was Fenella Stanley. 
 
 Then Stowell rose for the defence. There was a hush, and the 
 Deemster found himself breathing audibly and wishing that he 
 could pour something of himself into his son — ^himself as he used 
 to be in the old days when God had given him strength. 
 
 But that was only for a moment. Stowell began slowly, 
 almost nervously, but was soon speaking with complete command, 
 and the Deemster, who had been bending forward, leaned back. 
 
 He did not intend to call witnesses. Neither would he put the 
 prisoner into the box. He would content himself with the evi- 
 dence for the Crown. He knew no more about the crime than the 
 jury did. The accused had told him nothing, and degraded as they 
 
THE DEATH OF THE DEEMSTER 113 
 
 might think her, he had not thought it right to invade the sanctity 
 of a woman's soul. That she had killed her husband was clear. 
 If killing him was a crime she was guilty. But was it a crime.? 
 To answer that let the jury follow him while he did his best to 
 piece together, from the evidence before them, the torn manuscript 
 of this poor creature's story. 
 
 Then followed such speaking as none could remember to have 
 heard in that court before. Flash after flash of spiritual light 
 seemed to recreate the stages of the prisoner's life. First, as the 
 child, who should have been happy as the birds and bright as the 
 flowers, but had never known one hour of the love and guidance of 
 her natural protectors. Next, as the young girl, pretty perhaps, 
 with the light of love dawning on her, but betrayed and abandoned. 
 Next, as the deserted creature, braving out her disgrace with 
 " Wait ! only wait ! My gentleman will come back and marry me 
 yet ! " Next, as the badgered and shame-ridden woman, with all 
 hope gone, saying to her despairing heart, " What do I care what 
 happens to me now? Not a toss ! " and then marrying (as the last 
 cover for a hunted dog) the brute who afterwards had beaten her, 
 brutalized her, cursed her, taught her to drink, and brought her 
 down, down, down to ... . what they saw. 
 
 Kill him ? Yes, she had killed him — there couldn't be a doubt 
 about that. But if she had three wounds on her body, and he had 
 only the wound from which he died, was it not clear as noonday 
 that she had been the victim of a murderous assault, and had 
 struck back to save her life? If so her act was not miurder and 
 the only righteous verdict would be Not Guilty. 
 
 For the last passage of his defence Stowell faced full upon the 
 jury, and spoke in a ringing and searching voice: 
 
 " 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 
 worfld 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 decora- 
 tions 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. 
 
114 THE MASTER OP MAN 
 
 The spectators had listened without making a sound; the jury 
 (a panel of stolid Manx farmers) had sat without moving a mus- 
 cle ; 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 difiiculty, 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. 
 
 "Wonderful! He snatched the woman out of the jaws of 
 death, Sir ! " " The Deemster's a grand man, but he'll have to be 
 looking to his laurels ! " " Man alive, that was a speech that must 
 have been dear to a father's heart, though ! " 
 
 Stowell was one of the first to appear. He looked pale, almost 
 ill, and was carrying his soft felt hat in his hand, for the Court- 
 house had been close and there was perspiration on his forehead 
 still. A way was made for him and he passed through the court- 
 yard without speaking or making sign, until he came under the 
 arch of the Portcullis and there he was stopped by someone. It 
 
THE DEATH OF THE DEEMSTER 115 
 
 was Fenella. She was waiting for the Governor and hoping she 
 might come upon Stowell also. Her eyes were red and swollen. 
 
 " How magnificent you were ! " she said. And then with a 
 half -tremulous laugh: "But how could you see into a woman's 
 heart like that.? I shall always be afraid of you in future, Sir! " 
 
 The Deemjster came next. He was muffled in his great-coat 
 and scarf, and was walking heavily on his stick, but there was a 
 proud look in his uplifted face. With his left hand he grasped 
 Victor's right, but he did not look at him, and he passed on without 
 a word. Fenella followed, oiFering her arm, but he insisted on 
 giving his — ^the grand old gentleman to the last. 
 
 But this time the Attorney-General had taken possession of 
 Stowell. He had lost his case, but one of his " boys " had won 
 it. " I've just been telling your father I always knew the root of 
 the matter was in you, he said, and then others gathered ajx>und. 
 
 The Governor came last, having had documents to sign, and 
 taking Stowell's arm, he carried him away, saying, " Come along — 
 they'll kill you." 
 
 The Deemster's dog-cart had now gone, but the Governor's 
 carriage was at the gate, with Fenella inside. 
 
 " Don't forget your promise about Ballamoar," she said. 
 
 " I'm going to-morrow," said Stowell. 
 
 Just then there was a commotion among the crowd. The liber- 
 ated woman was coming out of the Castle, surrounded by a tumul- 
 tuous company of her friends from the back streets. She saw 
 Stowell by the carriage door, and breaking away from her com- 
 panions she rushed up to him, threw herself at his feet, laid hold 
 of his hand and covered it with kisses. 
 
 " That settles it," said Fenella, in a thick voice, after the 
 woman had been carried off. " Now you know what the future of 
 your life is to be — ^that of the champion of wronged and helpless 
 women." 
 
 At the railway station, and in the railway carriage, StoweU's 
 fellow advocates overwhelmed him with congratulations, but he 
 hardly heard them. At last he folded his arms and closed his 
 eyes, and, thinking he was tired, they left off troubling him. 
 
 Oil arriving at Ramsey his pulses were beating fast, and on 
 going down the High Street, past the Old Plough Inn, he hardly 
 felt the ground under his feet. 
 
 Clashing his door behind him he went into his bedroom and 
 threw himself down on his bed. An immense joy had taken 
 possession of him. Ambition, dead so long, had been restored to 
 vivid life under Fenella's last words. 
 
116 THE MASTER OF MAV 
 
 And then came a shock. Turning to the table by his bedside, 
 his eyes fell on the photograph that stood upon it. 
 Bessie Collister! 
 
 II 
 
 The Deemster had a cheerful homegoing. Young Eobbie 
 Creer said afterwards that he had never seen the old man so strong 
 and hearty. Driving himself, he saluted everybody on the roads, 
 always by name and generally in the Anglo-Manx. All the way 
 back it was " How do, John ? " or " Grand day done, Mr. KiUip." 
 
 Janet was waiting for him at the porch of Ballamoar. 
 
 " You must be tired after your long day, your Honour .f" " 
 
 "Not at aU!" 
 
 " And Victor — ^how did he get on. Sir ? " 
 
 " Wonderfully ! Won his case and covered himself with 
 honour." 
 
 At dinner (he insisted on Janet dining with him) he talked of 
 nothing but Victor and the trial. 
 
 " He has got his foot on the ladder now. Miss Curphey, and 
 there is no height to which he may not ascend." 
 
 Janet could do nothing but wipe her shining eyes and say, 
 
 " Aw, well now ! Think of that now ! " And then, with a 
 wise shake of her old head, " But nobody can say I didn't know 
 he would make us proud of him some day." 
 
 Night fell. Janet began to be afraid of the Deemster's ex- 
 citement. She remembered Doctor Clucas's order (privately given 
 to her) to knock at the Deemster's door between six and seven 
 every morning, and, if she got no answer, to go into the room. 
 She would do so to-morrow. 
 
 After Janet had gone to bed the Deemster sat at his desk in the 
 Library and wrote for a long time in his leather-bound book. 
 When he rose the clock on the landing was striking twelve. 
 
 He closed the book, but instead of putting it imder lock and 
 key, as he had always done before, he left it open on the desk, 
 merely shutting the lid on it. Then with a long look round the 
 room he put out the lamps and turned to go upstairs. 
 
 The reaction had begun by this time, and he staggered a little 
 and laid hold of the handrail. He paused three times on the 
 stairs, but his weakness did not frighten him. Lighting his candle 
 on the landing, he wound the clock, extinguished the lamp that 
 stood by it and faced the last flight with a smile. All was silent 
 in the house now. 
 
 On reaching his own bedroom he paused again, and then 
 
THE DEATH OF THE DEEMBTEB 117 
 
 stepped down the corridor to Victor's. The door was ajar. He 
 pushed it open, took a step into the empty room and looked round — 
 at the cocoa-nut matting, the rugs, the bed in the shadow, the dis- 
 coloured school trunk in the corner. And then he smiled again. 
 But he was breathing deeply at intervals and had the look of a 
 man who knew that he was doing familiar things for the last time. 
 
 The window in his own room was open, and the smell of tropi- 
 cal plants (especially the magnolia, with its sleep-inducing odour) 
 was coming up from the garden. He remembered that his own 
 father had brought them from the East long ago, when he was 
 himself a boy. 
 
 The sky was dark, but the hidden moon broke through silvery 
 clouds for a moment, and, looking through the surrounding black- 
 ness, he saw the bald crown of Snaef ell, far beyond the trees and 
 above the glen. He remembered that he had seen it so all the way 
 up since he was a child. 
 
 He closed the curtains slowly and taking his candle again he 
 walked around the room and looked long at the pictures on the 
 walls. They were chiefly portraits or miniatures of Victor, at 
 various periods of childhood and youth — the latest being a photo- 
 graph sent home to him from abroad. 
 
 That was the last oscillation of the pendulum. When he was 
 about to prepare for bed he found his strength exhausted, and he 
 was compelled to sit several times while he undressed. But he 
 continued to smile, and when he lay down at length and' put his 
 head on the pillow he did it with a will. 
 
 Then he closed his eyes, and drew a deep breath, as one who 
 has gone through a long day's labour but has seen it finish up well 
 at the end. And then he closed his eyes and the surge of sleep 
 passed over him. 
 
 Outside the house everything seemed to slumber. It was a 
 night strangely calm and dark. The tall elms stood like soimdless 
 sentinels in the darkness. Not a leaf stirred. The rivers flowed 
 without noise, as if a supernatural hand had been laid on them to 
 silence them. The only sound was the slow boom of the sea, which 
 seemed to come up out of the ground and to be the pulse of the 
 earth itself. The deep mystery of night was over all. 
 
 Towards morning there was a faint waft of wind in the trees 
 and along the grass. Was it the movement in the earth's bosom 
 of the new day about to be born? Or some invisible presence strid- 
 ing along with noiseless footsteps? 
 
 Within the house everything seemed to sleep. But the Deem- 
 ster lay dead. 
 
118 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 in 
 
 " Mr. Victor, Sir ! Mr. Victor ! " 
 
 It was Robbie Creer, who, after knocking in vain at Stowell's 
 door in the grey hours of morning, was shouting up at his window. 
 He had driven into town in the dog-cart and the little mare was 
 steaming with perspiration. 
 
 Stowell threw up the window and heard the dread news. 
 After a moment he answered, in a voice that sounded strange in 
 Robbie's ears: 
 
 " Wait for me. I will go back with you." 
 
 When he was ready to go he wrote a message to Fenella, and 
 left it for Mrs. Quayle to send off as soon as the telegraph 
 office opened: 
 
 " He has gone, heaven forgive me. I am going home now." 
 
 It was Sunday morning, and the sleeping streets echoed to the 
 rattle of the flying wheels. When they got into the country (they 
 were taking the shortest cuts) the farms were lying idle and quiet. 
 Stowell sat with folded arms while they raced past the whitewashed 
 cottages with thatched roofs, and scattered flocks of geese that 
 went ofl" with screams and stretched necks. 
 
 On arriving at Ballamoar he paused before entering the house. 
 The psistoral tranquillity of the place was heart-breaking. The 
 sun had risen, the rooks were cawing, the linnets were twittering 
 in the eaves, a kitten was playing with a butterfly in the porch — 
 it was just as if nothing had happened during the night. 
 
 Janet was in his father's room, with red eyes and a handker- 
 chief in her hand. She did not speak, but her silence seemed to 
 say, " Why didn't you come before? " 
 
 Stowell advanced to the side of the bed. The august face on 
 the pillow, in the majesty and tranquillity of death, had never 
 before looked so calm and noble, but that also seemed to say: 
 " Why didn't you come before.'' " He reached over and put his 
 lips to the cold forehead. And' then, with head down, he hurried 
 from the room. 
 
 He could never afterwards remember what he did during the 
 rest of that day — only that to escape from the vague cheerfulness, 
 the hushed bustle, the half-smothered hysteria, which come to a 
 house after a death, he had strolled along the shore and past the 
 ruined church in which he had walked with Fenella. 
 
 At length Janet came to him in the library to say " Good- 
 night " and to sob out something about not grieving too much. 
 And' then he was left alone. 
 
 Sitting at the desk, where his father had sat the night before. 
 
TEE DEATH OF THE DEEMSTER 119 
 
 he took up the leather-bound book and read it from end to end — 
 not without a sense of looking into the sanctuary of another soul, 
 where only God's eyes should see. 
 
 It was a large volume, of some five hundred quarto pages, with 
 " Isobel's Diary " inscribed on its first page, and these words 
 below ; 
 
 " Inasmuch as I cannot believe that my beloved compan- 
 ion who has died to-day is lost to me even in this life, and 
 being convinced that the divine purpose in leaving me behind 
 is that I may care for and guard her child, I dedicate this 
 book to the record of my sacred duty." 
 
 Then followed, in the Deemster's steady handwriting, a daily 
 entry, sometimes only a phrase or a line, sometimes a page, but 
 always about his son: 
 
 " This morning in the library, making my desk under 
 your portrait his altar. Parson Cowley . baptised your boy — 
 Janet Curphey standing godmother, and the Attorney his 
 other sponsor. We called him Victor, so the last of your dear 
 wishes has been fulfilled." 
 
 Stowell looked up and around him. He was on the very spot 
 of that scene of so many years ago. Then came records of his 
 childhood, his childish talk, his childish rhymes, his childish 
 ailments : 
 
 " Your boy contracted a cold yesterday, and fearing it 
 might develop into bronchitis, I sat up most of the night that 
 I might go into the nursery at intervals to mend the fire under 
 the steam kettle, Janet being worn out and sleepy. Thank 
 God his breathing is better this morning! " 
 
 Stowell felt as if he were choking. Then came the records of 
 his school-days; his expulsion; the slack times before he set to 
 work; the bright ones when he was a student-at-law; the dark 
 ones when he was going headlong to the dogs. After these latter 
 entries it would be: 
 
 " A son is a separate being, Isobel. I can' only stand 
 and wait." 
 
 Or sometimes, as if for comfort, a line from one of the great 
 books, not rarely the Bible: 
 
 " Thy way is in the sea, and thy path is the great waters, 
 and thy footsteps are not known." 
 
120 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 It was now the middle of the night. A dog was howling some- 
 where in the farm. Stowell paused and thought of the supersti- 
 tion about a howling dog and a dead body. When he resumed his 
 reading he turned the pages with a trembling hand: 
 
 " It is six months since Victor returned to the island and 
 he has only been here twice. I had hoped he would come to 
 live with me at BaUamoar. But I must not complain. Nature 
 looks forward, not backward. No son can love his father as 
 the father loves the son. That is the law of life, Isobel, and 
 we who are fathers must reconcile ourselves to it." 
 
 Stowell felt his head reel and his eyes swim. If he had only 
 known. If somebody had only told him! 
 
 The fire behind him had gone out by this time and he had 
 begun to shiver. But he turned back to the book for the few re- 
 maining pages. And then came a shock. They were all about 
 Fenella, and the Deemster's hope that she and his son would marry. 
 
 " Never were two young people better matched to the 
 outer eye, Isobel — that splendid girl with her conquering love- 
 liness or your son with his mother's face. Her influence on 
 him seems to be wonderful. She has only been a month back 
 from London, but he is like a new man already." 
 
 Overwhelmed with confusion Stowell tried to close the book, 
 but he could not do so. 
 
 " A man looks for a woman who is a heroine, and a woman 
 for a man who is a hero, and please God these two have found 
 each other." 
 
 Then came a glowing account of the trial at Castle Rushen, 
 and then: 
 
 " So it's all well at last, Isobel. Your son can do without 
 me now. He needs his father no longer. With that fine 
 woman by his side he will go up and up. They will marry 
 and carry on the tradition of the Ballamoars. It is the 
 dearest wish of my heart that they should do so." 
 
 There was only one entry after that, and it ran: 
 
 " I am tired and my work is done. Now I can rejoin you, 
 having waited so long. When I close my eyes to-night I 
 shall see your face — I know I shall. So Good-night, Isobel ! 
 Or should I say, Good-morning? 
 
 The clock on the landing was striking three — the most solemn 
 hour of day and night, for it is the hour between. Stowell, with 
 
THE BEATS OF THE DEEMSTER 121 
 
 a heavy heart, the book in one hand and his candle in the other, 
 
 was going to bed. Reaching the door of his father's room he 
 
 dropped to his knees. 
 
 "Forgive me! Forgive me! Forgive me!" 
 
 But after a while a light seemed to break on him. Where his 
 
 father now was he would know that there was no help for it — ^that 
 
 he, too, must follow the line of honour. 
 
 " Yes," he thought, rising and going on to his own room. " I 
 
 must do the right, whatever it may cost me." 
 
 IV 
 
 On the morning of the burial, Stowell received a letter from 
 Bessie CoUister: 
 
 " Dere Victor, 
 
 " I am sorry to here from Alick about the death of the 
 Deemster you must feel it verry much the loss of such a good 
 kinde father everrybody is talking about him and saying he 
 was the best gentleman that everr was thank you for the nice 
 cloths Mrs. Quayle bought me. Alick is very kinde — 
 
 " Bessie." 
 
 The poor, illiterate, inadequate, iU-spent message made 
 Stowell's heart grow cold, and with a certain shame he read it by 
 stealth and then smuggled it away. 
 
 The news of the Deemster's death had fallen on the Manx 
 people like a thunder-bolt. The one great man of Man had gone. 
 It was almost as if the island had lost its soul. 
 
 No work was done on the day of the funeral. At ten o'clock 
 in the morning the whole population seemed to be crossing the 
 Curragh lanes to Ballamoar. By eleven the broad lawn was 
 covered with a vast company of all classes, from the officials to- the 
 crofters. A long line of carriages, cars and stiff carts, lined the 
 roads that surrounded the house. 
 
 The day had broken fair, with a kind of mild brightness, but 
 out on that sandy headland the wind had risen and white wreaths 
 of mist were floating over the land. It was late September and 
 the leaves were falling rapidly. 
 
 Nobody entered the house. According to Manx custom all 
 stood outside. At half-past eleven the front door was opened and 
 the body was brought out, under a pall, and laid on four chairs in 
 front of it. A moment later Victor Stowell came behind, bare- 
 headed and very pale. A wide space was left for him by the bier, 
 A creeper that covered the house was blood-red at his back. 
 
122 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Somebody started a hymn — " Abide witBi.me " — and it was 
 taken up by the vast company ia front. The rooks swirled and 
 screamed over the heads of the singers. The bald* head of old 
 Snaefell looked down through the trees. 
 
 Then the procession was formed. It took the grassy lane at 
 the back by which the Deemster had always gone to church. 
 Everybody walked, and six sets of bearers claimed the right " to 
 carry the old man home." 
 
 They sang two h5Tnns on the way : " Lead, Kindly Light " 
 and " Rock of Ages." Between the verses the wind whistled 
 through the gorse hedges on either side. Sometimes it raised the 
 skirt of the pall and showed the bare oak beneath. 
 
 When they reached the cross roads in front of the church the 
 bell began to toll. At that moment a white mist was driving 
 across the church tower and almost obscuring it. 
 
 The Bishop of the island was at the gate, waiting for the pro- 
 cession, but Parson Cowley, pale and trembling, was also there, 
 and he would have fought to the death for his right to bury 
 the Deemster. 
 
 " I am the Resurrection and the Life," he began in his quaver- 
 ing voice, as the procession came up, and at the next moment the 
 mists vanished. The little churchyard with its weather-beaten 
 stones, seemed to look up at the wonderful sky and out on the 
 sightless sea. The bearers had to bend their knees as they passed 
 through the low door. 
 
 Every seat in the body of the church was occupied^ and great 
 numbers had to remain outside. But Victor Stowell sat alone in 
 the pew of the Ballamoars with the marble tablet on the wall 
 behind him — four hundred years of his family and he the last of 
 them. During the reading of the Epistle the lashing and wailing 
 of the wind outside almost drowned the Bishop's voice. 
 
 The service ended with the singing of another hymn, " O God 
 our help in ages past." Everybody knew the words, and they were 
 taken up by the people outside: 
 
 " Time, like an ever-rolling stream. 
 Bears all its sons away." 
 
 Thus far Victor Stowell had gone through everjrthing in a kind 
 of stupor. He was conscious that the island was there to do honour 
 to her greatest son, but that was nothing to him now. When he 
 came to himself he was standing by the open vault of the Stowells. 
 A line of stones lay over the closed part of it, some of them old 
 and worn and with the lettering almost obliterated. But a cross 
 
THE SAVINa OF KATE KINRADE 123 
 
 of white marble, which had been, dislodged from its place, lay at 
 his feet, and it bore the words: 
 
 " To the dear memory of Isabel, the beloved wife of 
 Douglas Stowell, Deemster of this Isle." 
 
 Victor's throat was throbbing. He was losing (what no man 
 can lose twice) his father and greatest friend, whose slightest 
 word and wish should be as sacred to him as his sonl. 
 
 He heard the words " dust to dust " and they were like the 
 reverberation of eternity. Then came a dead void, after Parson 
 Cowley's voice had ceased, and it was just as if the pulse of the 
 world had stopped. 
 
 And then, at that last moment as he stepped forward and 
 looked down, and everybody fell back for him, and only the sea's 
 boom was audible as it beat on the clifiFs below, somebody (he did 
 not turn to look, for he knew who it was) coming up to his side, and 
 putting her arm through his, said in a tremulous voice, 
 
 " He is better there. In their death they are not divided." 
 
 It was Fenella. 
 
 At the next moment, something he could not resist, something 
 unconquerable and overwhelming, made him put his arms about 
 her and kiss her. 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
 
 THE SAVING OF KATE KINRADE 
 
 The Governor was waiting for Stowell at the side gate to 
 Ballamoar. 
 
 " You look ill, my boy, and no wonder," he said. " Fenella 
 and I are to take a short cruise in the yacht before the autumn 
 ends. You must come along with us." 
 
 For the farmers and fishermen who had travelled long distances 
 a meal had been provided in the barn — a kind of robustious after- 
 wake for the Deemster, presided over by the elder and younger 
 Robbie Creers. 
 
 Alick Gell alone returned with Stowell to the house. In his 
 black frock coat and tall silk hat he had walked back from the 
 Church by Stowell's side, snuffling audibly but saying nothing. To 
 Stowell's relief he was still silent through luncheon and for several 
 
124 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 hours afterwards. It was not until they were in the porch, and 
 Gell was on the point of going, that anything of consequence 
 was said. 
 
 " What about Bessie.? " asked Stowell. 
 
 " Oh, Bessie ? " said Gell (he looked a little confused) 
 " Bessie's all right, I think. But there's trouble coming in that 
 quarter, I'm afraid." 
 
 "What trouble?" 
 
 " As we were walking along Langness yesterday — I went 
 down to tell her about the Deemster — we met Caesar Qualtrough 
 coming from the farm." 
 
 " Qualtrough.'' " 
 
 " You know — father of the yoimg scoundrel who got us into 
 that scrape at King William's." 
 
 " I remember." 
 
 " He's a friend of Dan Baldromma's, and Dan is a tenant of 
 my father's and .... But good Lord, what matter ! I've worse 
 things than that to worry about." 
 
 As Gell was going out of the gate, the night was falling and 
 the stars were out, and he was saying to himself, " Does he really 
 care for the girl, or is it only a sense of duty? " 
 
 And Stowell, as he closed the door and went back into the house 
 (empty and vault-like now, as a house is on the first night after 
 the being who has been the soul of it has been left outside) was 
 thinking, " I can't allow Alick to be my scapegoat any longer." 
 
 But at the next moment he was thinking of Fenella. With 
 mingled shame and joy he was asking himself what was being 
 thought of the incident in the churchyard — by Fenella herself, by 
 the Governor, by everybody. 
 
 Next day the Attorney-General came with the will. Except 
 for a few legacies to servants, the Deemster had left everything 
 to his son. 
 
 " So, with your mother's fortune, you are one of the rich men 
 of the island, now, Victor. A great responsibility, my boy! I 
 pray God you may choose the right partner. But " (with a mean- 
 ing smile) " that will be all right, I think." 
 
 During the next days Stowell occupied himself with Joshua 
 Scarff, the Deemster's clerk (a tall, thin, elderly man wearing 
 dark spectacles) in paying-ofF the legacies. Only one of these 
 gave him any anxiety. This was Janet's, and it was accompanied 
 by a pension, in case Victor should decide to superannuate her. 
 Against doing so all his heart cried out, but something whispered 
 that if Janet were gone it might be the easier for Bessie. 
 
THE SAVINa OF KATE KIN BADE i25 
 
 Janet was in floods of tears at the possibility. 
 
 " I couldn't have believed it of the Deemster ! " she said. " I 
 really couldn't ! You can keep the legacy, dear. I have no use for 
 it except to give it back to you. But I won't leave Ballamoar. 
 'Deed, I won't ! Not imtil another woman comes to be mistress in 
 it, and wants me to go. And she never will, the darling — I'll trust 
 her for that, anyway." 
 
 A day or two later StoweU was in his father's room, when he 
 came upon an envelope inscribed: " To be opened hy my son." It 
 contained a ring, a beautiful and valuable gem, with a note saying: 
 
 " This mas your mother's engagement ring. I wish you to give 
 it to Fenella Stanley. Take it yourself." 
 
 Stowell was stupefied. Struggling with a sense of his duty to 
 the girl whom he had sent to Derby Haven he had been telling 
 himself that he must never see Fenella again. But here was a 
 sacred command from the dead. 
 
 For three days he thought he could not possibly go to Govern- 
 ment House. On the fourth day he went. 
 
 The beauty and charm of the atmosphere of Fenella's home 
 were heart-breaking. And Fenella herself, in a soft tea-gown, 
 was almost more than he could bear to look upon. 
 
 She, too, seemed embarrassed, and when Miss Green (an 
 English counterpart of Janet) left them alone with each other, 
 and he gave her the ring, saying what his father had told him to 
 do with it, her embarrassment increased. 
 
 She held it in her fingers, turned it over and looked at it, and 
 said, " How lovely ! How good of him ! " And then, trembling 
 and tingling, and with a slightly heightened colour, she looked at 
 Stowell. 
 
 Suddenly a thought flashed upon him. Why had his father 
 told him to take the ring to her himself ? The answer was speaking 
 in Fenella's eyes — ^that, at the topmost moment of their love, 
 he should put it on. 
 
 At the next instant the Governor entered the drawing-room, 
 and Fenella, holding up her hand (she had put the ring on for 
 herself by this time) cried: 
 
 " See what the Deemster has left to me ! " 
 
 " Beautiful ! " said the Governor, and then he looked from 
 Stowell to his daughter. 
 
 Stowell rose to go. He had the sense of flying from the house. 
 Fenella must have thought him a fool. The Governor must have 
 thought him a fool. But better be a fool than a traitor ! 
 
 A week passed and then an idea came to him. He would tell 
 
126 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 the truth to Bessie's people — the whole truth if necessary. That 
 would commit him once for all to the line of honour. Having 
 taken that public plunge there could be no looking back, and the 
 bitter struggle between his passion and his duty would then be over. 
 
 With a certain pride at the thought of being about to do an 
 heroic thing he set out one day for Eamsey, intending to return 
 by Baldromma. But on entering his outer office his young clerk 
 told him that Mr. Daniel Collister was in his private room, that he 
 had been waiting there for two hours, and refusing to go away. 
 
 Dan, with his short, gross figure, was standing astride on the 
 hearthrug, and without so much as a bow he plunged into his 
 business. 
 
 A respectable man's house was in disgrace. His step-daughter 
 had run away. Been carried olF by a scoundrel — there couldn't 
 he a doubt of it. A month gone and not the whisper of a word 
 from her. The mother was broken-hearted, so he had been traip- 
 sing the island over to find the girl. 
 
 " I belave I'm on the track of her at last though. She's down 
 Castletown way, and the man that's been the cause of her trouble 
 isn't far off, I'm thinking." 
 
 " And whom do you say it is, Mr. Collister ? " 
 
 " Somebody that's middling close to yourself, sir — Mr. Alick 
 Gell, the son of the Spaker." 
 
 " No, no, no ! " 
 
 "Who else then?" 
 
 Stowell tried to speak but could not. 
 
 " Wasn't he the cause of her disgrace at the High Bailiff's? 
 And hasn't he been keeping up his bad character ever since — 
 standing by the side of disorderly walkers in the Douglas Coorts, 
 they're saying? " 
 
 He must have promised to marry the girl. But he hadn't. He 
 (Dan) had been to the Registrar's at Douglas and found that out. 
 
 " The toot ! The boght ! The booby ! I was warning her 
 enough. The man that takes advantage of a dacent girl isn't much 
 for marrying her afterwards." 
 
 Remembering Dan's share in the catastrophe, Stowell was feel- 
 ing the vertigo of a temptation to take the gross creature by the 
 neck and fling him through the window. 
 
 " Why do you come to me ? " he asked. 
 
 " To ask you to tell your friend that he's got to make an 
 honest woman of the girl." 
 
 " Is that all you are thinking about? " 
 
 Dan drew a quick breath, then dug both hands into the upright 
 
TEE SAVING OF KATE KINiRADE 127 
 
 pockets of his trousers, thrust forward his thick neck, with a ges- 
 ture peculiar to the bull, and answered: 
 
 " No, I'm thinking of myself as well, and what for shouldn't 
 I ? I'm going to stand up for my own rights, too. The man that 
 treats my girl like that has got to marry her, and I'm not going to 
 be satisfied with nothing less." 
 
 Then picking up his billycock hat and making for the door 
 he said: 
 
 '* I lave it with you, Mr. Stowell, Sir. If the Dempster was the 
 grand' gentleman people are saying, his son will be seeing justice 
 done to me and mine. If not, the island will be too hot for the 
 guilty man, I'm thinking." 
 
 When Dan had gone Stowell felt sick and dizzy, and as if he 
 were drawing back from the edge of a precipice. HSs heroic act 
 of self-sacrifice had dwindled to a ridiculous weakness. 
 
 This man, with his blatant vulgarity of mind and soul, at 
 Ballamoar ! His father-in-law ! A member of his family ! Rid- 
 ing over him with a degrading tyranny! In the dining-room, 
 with his broad buttocks to the fire — never, never, never ! 
 
 Hardly had Dan's footsteps ceased on the stair when the young 
 clerk came from the outer office in great excitement. 
 
 " His Excellency is here. He's coming upstairs. Sir." 
 
 II 
 
 " Helloa, I've found you." 
 
 The Governor was in yachting costume. 
 
 " Well, the yacht is lying outside, and Fenella and I are doing 
 a little circumnavigating of the island, so come along." 
 
 Stowell tried to excuse himself, but the Governor would listen 
 to no excuses. 
 
 " Everybody says you are looking like a ghost these days, and 
 so you are. Therefore come, let's get a breath of sea-air into you." 
 
 " But your Excellency. . . ." 
 
 " Ive brought one of the ship's boys ashore for your bag, 
 so pack it quick. . . ." 
 
 " But really. . . ." 
 
 " Where's your bedroom and I'll pack it myself." 
 
 "No, no! But if I must. . . ." 
 
 " That's better ! I'll smoke a pipe and wait for you." 
 
 " After all, why not ? " thought Stowell, as he packed his bag 
 and put on flannels and a blue jacket. This flying away from 
 Fenella was unworthy of a man. It was cowardly, contemptible. 
 He must learn to resist temptation. 
 
128 THE MABTEB OF MAN 
 
 Half an hour later he was riding with the Governor in a dinghj' 
 over the fresh waters of the bay towards a large white yacht, 
 " The Fenella," with the red ensign fluttering over her. The 
 gangway was open and as Stowell stepped on to the spotless deck 
 of the ship, her namesake, also in yachting costume, was waiting 
 to receive him. 
 
 The mainsail, mizzen and jib being set, the grey-bearded cap- 
 tain, in blue with brass buttons, called on his boys to swing the 
 dinghy up to the davits and haid in the anchor. In a few minutes 
 more, to the hiss and simmer of the sea, the yacht was running 
 free before the wind, leaving the town to the south behind it. 
 
 The bell rang for luncheon, and with the Governor and Fenella, 
 Stowell crossed to the companion and went down to the saloon. 
 Books and field-glasses were lying about the sofas and the table 
 was glistening with silver and glass. Blue silk curtains, with the 
 sunlight shining through them, were fluttering over the skylight 
 and the port-holes. How fresh ! How charming ! 
 
 When they came up on deck an hour afterwards they were 
 doubling the Point of Ayre, and the lighthouse at the northernmost 
 end of it was looking like a .marble column with a glittering eye. 
 Towards six o'clock tliey cast anchor for the night off Peel. 
 
 The sun was then setting, and the herring fleet (a hundred 
 boats) going out for the night were passing in front of the red sky 
 like a flight of black birds. By the time dinner was over the 
 drowsy spirit of the sunset had died over the waters behind them, 
 the twilight had deepened to a ghostly grey, and the moon had 
 risen over the little fishing town in front and the gaunt walls of the 
 ruined Peel Castle which stands on an island rock. 
 
 The Governor, who had sent ashore for the day's newspapers, 
 remained in the cabin to read them. But Stowell and Fenella sat 
 on deck under the moon and the stars. The air had become very 
 quiet. There was no sound anywhere except the tranquil wash of 
 the waves against the yacht and the whispering of the sea outside. 
 
 Fenella talked and laughed. Stowell laughed and talked. 
 They found it so easy to talk to each other. 
 
 The night wore on. The moon going westward made the 
 broken walls of the Castle stand up black above the shore, with its 
 empty window-sockets like eyes looking from the lighter sky. 
 
 Stowell talked of the old ruin and its legendary and historical 
 associations — St. Patrick, the spectre hound {the Mauthe Doo), 
 the ecclesiasticEil prison and the graves in the roofless Cathedral. 
 
 " But I'll tell you a story that beats all that," he said. 
 
 " About a woman of course? " said Fenella. 
 
 " Yes — a fallen woman." 
 
THE SAVINa OF KATE EINRADE 129 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " Her name was Kate Kinrade. She gave birth to an illegiti- 
 mate child, and the Bishop — he was a saint — ^thinking that her 
 conduct tended to the dishonour of the Christian name, ordered 
 that, for the saving of her soul, she should be dragged after a 
 boat across the bay of Peel on the fair of St. Patrick at the height 
 of the market." 
 
 " And was she? " 
 
 " The fishermen refused at first to carry out the censure, and 
 then excused themselves on the ground that St. Patrick's day was 
 too. tempestuous. But being threatened with fines, they did it at 
 last — in the depth of winter." 
 
 Fenella's gaiety had gone. Stowell gazed at her face in the 
 moonlight. It was quivering and her bosom was heaving. 
 
 " And the Bishop was a saint, you say ? " 
 
 "If ever there was one." 
 
 "He ordered the woman to be dragged through the sea at the 
 tail of a boat.^ " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And what did he do to the man? " 
 
 Stowell gasped. There was silence for a moment, and then the 
 Governor's voice came from the skylight of the cabin: 
 
 " Are you people never going to turn in ? " 
 
 " Presently." 
 
 " I am, anyway." 
 
 It was late. The lights of the little town had blinked out one 
 by one. Only the red light on the stone pier was burning. 
 
 Fenella recovered her gaiety after a while, shouted for echoes 
 to the Castle rock, and then took StoweU's arm to go down the 
 companion. 
 
 On reaching the darkened saloon she stepped on tiptoe and 
 dropped her voice under pretence of not disturbing her father, who 
 would be asleep. At the door of her cabin she ceased laughing 
 and said, 
 
 " Hush ! I'm going to say something." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I don't know if you're aware of it, but ever since I came home 
 you've been calling me ' Miss Stanley,' and I've been calling 
 you — anything." 
 
 " Well? " 
 
 " We used to call each other by our Christian names before. 
 Couldn't we go back to that? " 
 
 "Would you like to?" 
 
 There was a pause, and then, in a whisper, 
 9 
 
130 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Victor ! " 
 
 "Fenella!" 
 
 " Good-night ! " 
 
 It had been like a kiss. 
 
 Stowell went to his cabin in rapture, in pain, with a»-delicious 
 thrill and a sense of stifling h3rpocrisy. What a hypocrite he had 
 been! It was not to resist temptation but to dally with it that 
 he had come on this cruise. 
 
 He was there under false pretences. He had pledged himself 
 to the girl at Derby Haven, and yet .... 
 
 Thank God, he had gone no farther ! There was only one way 
 of escape from the perpetual fire of temptation — to hasten his 
 marriage with Bessie Collister. He must see her as soon as possible 
 and suggest that they should marry immediately. It was heart- 
 breaking, but there was no help for it, if he was to stand upright 
 as an honourable man. 
 
 Dan Baldromma.'' Well, what of him? He could shut the 
 door on Dan — of course he could! 
 
 Next morning Stowell was the first on deck. The air was salt 
 and chill; the day had not yet opened its eyes; there was a whir- 
 ring of wings and a calling of sea-birds; and through a sleepy 
 white mist, that might have been the smoke of the moon, the 
 herring fleet were coming like pale ghosts back to harbour. 
 
 A fresh breeze sprang up with the sunrise and the Captain 
 lifted anchor and stood out towards the south. Sheep were bleat- 
 ing on the head-land of Contrary, and as they opened the broad 
 bay of the Niarbyl the thatched cottages under the cliifs were 
 smoking for breakfast. 
 
 When they reached Port Erin the Governor came up and 
 ordered anchor to be cast again, saying they would lie there and 
 go out with the herring fleet in the evening. 
 
 Seeing his opportunity, Stowell said he would like to go ashore 
 for a few hours — a little business. 
 
 " Mind you're back by four o'clock then — we'll sail at high- 
 water." 
 
 As Stowell was being sculled ashore in the dinghy he was say- 
 ing to himself: 
 
 " No Kate Kinrade for me— never, never ! " 
 
 III 
 
 An hour later Stowell was in Derby Haven, a little fish- 
 ing village, smelling of sea-wrack and echoing with the cry 
 of gulls. 
 
THE SAVING OP KATE KINMADE 131 
 
 The Misses Brown, in their oiled ringlets and faded satin 
 dresses, received him, in their old maids' sitting-room, with much 
 ceremony, and he speedily realis.ed that Gell, in trying to shield 
 him, had gone farther than he expected. 
 
 " You wish to see Miss Collister? Well, since you are such a 
 close friend of Mr. Gell there can be no objection. . . . Bessie! 
 A gentleman to see you." 
 
 StoweU heard Bessie coming downstairs with great alacrity, but 
 on seeing him she drew up with a certain embarrassment. 
 
 " Oh, it's you.? " 
 
 She was shorter than he had thought, and the impression made 
 by her photograph of something common in her beauty was deep- 
 ened by the reality. 
 
 " Should we take a walk.'' " he said. 
 
 She hesitated for a moment, then went upstairs and returned 
 presently in a round hat and a close-fitting costume which sat 
 awkwardly upon her. What a change! Where was the free, 
 warm, natural, full-bosomed girl with bare neck and sunburnt arms 
 who had fascinated him in the glen ? 
 
 They took the unfrequented path on the western side of 
 Langness — a long serpentine tongue of land which protruded from 
 the open mouth of the sea. He tried to begin upon the subject 
 of ihis errand but found it Impossible to do so. 
 
 " Bye and bye," he thought, " bye and bye." 
 
 Bessie kept step with him, but was almost silent. He asked if 
 she was comfortable in her new quarters, and she said they were 
 lonesome after the farm, but old Miss Brown was a dear and Miss 
 Ethel a " dozey duck." 
 
 The common expression humiliated him. He inquired if she 
 had been able to relieve her mother's anxiety, and she answered 
 no, how could she, without letting her stepfather know where 
 she was? 
 
 " They're telling me he's travelling the island over looking for 
 me, but I don't know why. He was always dead nuts on me when 
 I was at home." 
 
 Again he felt ashamed. He found it impossible to keep up a 
 conversation with the girl. To attempt to do so was like throwing 
 a stone into the sand — no echo, no response. 
 
 Oily once did Bessie say anything for herself. She was walk- 
 ing on the landward side of the path, and seeing an old man, with 
 a pair of horses, grubbing a hungry-looking field, with a cloud of 
 sea-gulls swirling behind him, she said it was dirty land, full of 
 scutch, and the farmer was laying it open to the frosts of winter. 
 
 Stowell was feeling the sweat on his forehead. How was it 
 
132 THE MASTER OF MAIS 
 
 posible to lift up a girl like this ? She would be the farm girl to 
 the last. Good Lord, what magic was there in marriage to change 
 people and ensure their happiness? 
 
 BaUamoar? That lonesome place inside the tall trees! He 
 might shut out her family, but would not she — illiterate, uninter- 
 esting, inadequate — shut out his friends? And then, he and she 
 together there, with nothing in common, alone, in the long nights 
 of winter .... Oh God! 
 
 Ashamed of thinking like that of the girl, and having reached 
 the lighthouse by this time, he drew her arm through his and 
 turned to go back. The warmth of the contact revived a little of 
 the former thrill, and he laughed and talked. 
 
 The voice of the sea was low that day, and across the bay came 
 shouts and cheers in fresh young voices — the boys of King 
 William's were playing football. That brought memories to both 
 of them and he began to talk about Gell. 
 
 " Dear old Alick, he's such a good fellow, isn't he ? " 
 
 " 'Deed he is," said Bessie. 
 
 " By the way, he's a sort of old flame of yours, I believe," said 
 Stowell, looking sideways at the girl, and Bessie blushed and 
 laughed, but made no answer. 
 
 Those black eyes, those full red lips. Yes, this was the 
 girl who .... 
 
 But the idea of a marriage founded on the passion which had 
 brought them together revolted him now, and he let Bessie's arm 
 fall to his side. 
 
 When they got back to the old maid's cottage he had still said 
 nothing of what he had come to say. " Later on," he was telling 
 himself, but a secret voice inside was whispering, " Never ! It 
 is impossible ! " 
 
 The elder of the Miss Browns followed him to the gate to ask 
 if he did not see a great improvement in her charge, and when he 
 said that Bessie seemed to be a little subdued, she cried: 
 
 "Bessie? Oh dear no, not generally! Ask Mr. Gell." 
 
 Perhaps the girl was not well to-day — they had thought she 
 had not been very well lately. 
 
 " And how is she getting on with . . . . " (the word stuck in 
 his throat) " with her lessons ? " 
 
 " Wonderfully ! Of course she has long arrears to make up, 
 but the way she works to fit herself for her new station .... 
 well, it's enough to make a person cry, really." 
 
 Stowell felt as if something were taking him by the throat. 
 
 " In fact my sister and I used to wonder and wonder what she 
 did with her bedroom candles until we found out she was sitting 
 
THE EYERLASTINQ SONG OF THE SEA 133 
 
 up after everybody had gone to sleep to learn her grammar 
 and spelling." 
 
 Stowell felt as if something had struck him in the face. Every 
 hard thought about Bessie seemed to be wiped out of his mind 
 in a moment. 
 
 Going back to Port Erin (he walked all the way) he could think 
 of nothing but that girl sitting up in her bedroom to educate 
 herself, in her poor little way, that she might become worthy to 
 be his wife. 
 
 If he disappointed her now what would become of her? Would 
 she kill herself.'' Would the world kill her.? Kate Kinrade? 
 The days of the Bishop and the woman were not over yet. 
 
 No, he must keep his pledge, and make no more wry faces 
 about it. If it had been his duty before it was more than ever his 
 duty now. 
 
 But FeneUa? 
 
 He must put her out of his mind for ever. He would be the 
 most unhappy man alive, but then his own happiness was not the 
 only thing he had to think about. He could not live any longer 
 under false pretences. He must find some way of telling FeneUa 
 that he had engaged himself while she was away — ^that he was a 
 pledged man. 
 
 But what then.'' There would be nothing more between them 
 as long as they lived — not a smile or the clasp of a hand ! She 
 whom he had loved so long, never having loved anybody else ! It 
 would be like signing his death-warrant. 
 
 The dead leaves from the roadside were driving over his feet; 
 his eyes ached and his throat throbbed, but he gulped down his 
 emotion. After all he would be the only sufferer! Thank God 
 for that anyway! 
 
 As he reached Port Erin, he saw the white sails of the yacht 
 against the blue sea and sky. 
 
 " Yes, I must tell FeneUa — I must tell her to-night," he 
 thought, 
 
 CHAPTER FOURTEEN 
 
 THE EVERLASTING SONG OP THE SEA 
 
 " Ah, here you are at last ! Just in time ! A breeze sprang 
 up an hour ago, and the Captain would have gone without you but 
 for me. The herring fleet have gone already. Look, there they 
 are, sailing into the sunset." 
 
 FeneUa was in high spirits. Having prevailed upon the Gov- 
 ernor to let them have a real night with the herrings (turning the 
 
134 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 yacht into a fishing boat) she had borrowed a net and hired fi.sher- 
 men's clothes — oilskins and a sou'-wester for hetrself and a 
 " ganzy " and big boots for Stowell. 
 
 It was impossible to resist the contagion of Fenella's gaiety. 
 "Why try?" thought StoweU. It would be his last night of 
 happiness. To-morrow he would have to bury it for ever. 
 
 In a few minutes, having cleared the harbour, they had opened 
 the land on either side and were standing out for the fishing 
 ground. Within two hours, in the midst of the fleet, they were sail- 
 ing over the Carlingford sands, midway between the island and 
 Ireland, and the sea-birds skimming above the water were showing 
 them the shoal. 
 
 Dinner was over, and Stowell, in jersey and big boots up to his 
 thighs, saw Fenella come on deck in her oilskin coat and sou'- 
 wester — with the new and surprising beauty which fresh garments, 
 whatever they are, give to every woman in the eyes of the man who 
 loves her. 
 
 What shouts ! What laughter ! Stowell kept saying to himself: 
 
 " Why not.^ It will soon be over." 
 
 They slackened sail and waited for the sun to go down before 
 shooting their nets. Presently the great ball of flame descended 
 into the sea, the admiral of the fleet ran his flag to his masthead, 
 and the Captain cried, " Shoot ! " 
 
 Then the brown net, with its floats, was dropped over the stern 
 (Fenella taking a hand and shouting with the men), the foresail 
 was hauled down, and the mizzen set to keep the ship head to the 
 wind. And then, all being snug for the night, came the fisher- 
 man's prayer: 
 
 " Dy hannie Patrick Noo shin as nyn maaty " (May St. 
 Patrick bless us and our boat) with something about the living and 
 the dead — the crew and the fish. 
 
 After that came the throwing of the salt, a more robustious and 
 less religious ceremony, which threw Fenella into fits of laughter. 
 
 " What does it mean? " she asked. 
 
 " Goodness knows ! " 
 
 " How delightful ! " 
 
 The grey twilight came down from the northern heavens, and 
 then night fell — a dark night without moon but with a world of 
 stars. Stowell and Fenella were leaning over the side to watch the 
 phosphorescent gleams which, like flashes of light under the sur- 
 face, came from the fish that were darting away from the prow. 
 
 " Isn't it wonderful — the fish going on and on to the goal of 
 their perpetual travels ? " said Fenella. 
 
TBE EVERLASTING SONG OF THE SEA 135 
 
 " They always come back to the place they were spawned, 
 though," said Stowell. 
 
 " Like humans, are they? You remember — ' Back to the 
 heart's place here I keep for thee.' " 
 
 Stowell felt as if a hand were at his throat again. " Bye and 
 bye," he thought. Before they turned in for the night he would 
 tell her everything. 
 
 Suddenly there was a crash at the stern — ^the anchor had been 
 lifted up and then banged down on the deck. 
 
 " What's that? " cried Fenella. 
 
 " They're proving the nets to see if the fish are coming," said 
 Stowell, and hurrying aft together they found the water milky 
 white and full of irridescent rays. 
 
 A couple of warps of the net were hauled aboard, and twelve or 
 fifteen herring fell on to the deck. Fenella picked them up, wrig- 
 gling, cheeping and twisting in her hands and threw them into a 
 basket — she was in a fever of excitement. 
 
 After that several of the boats that were fishing alongside 
 called across to know the result of the proving, and the Captain 
 answered them in Manx, with the crude symbolism of the sea. 
 
 " Let me do it next time," said Fenella. 
 
 " Do you think you can, miss ? " asked the Captain. 
 
 " She can do anything," said Stowell, and when the next boat 
 called, Fenella (with Stowell to prompt her) stood ready to replj'. 
 
 " R'ou prowal, bhoy? " cried the voice out of the darkness. 
 
 " What's he saying? Quick! " 
 
 " He's asking were you proving, boy. Say ' Va — I was.' " 
 
 Fenella put her open palms at each side of her mouth, under 
 her sou'-wester, and cried, " Val " 
 
 " Quoid oo er y piyr? " 
 
 " He asks what you found in your net. Say ' Pohnnar — 
 a child.' " 
 
 " Oh my goodness ! Pohnnar/' cried Fenella. 
 
 " Cre'n eash dy pohnnar? " 
 
 " He asks what is the age ofyour child. Say ' Dussan ny 
 quieg-yeig — ^twelve to fifteen.' " 
 
 " My goodness gracious ! Dussan ny quieg-yeig," cried Fenella. 
 
 By this time everybody was in convulsions of laughter, and 
 Stowell could scarcely resist the impulse to throw his arms about 
 Fenella and kiss her. " Soon ! Soon ! I must tell her soon ! " 
 he thought. 
 
 The wind had dropped and a great stillness had fallen on the 
 sea. The glow from the lights of the Dublin was in the western 
 sky ; the revolving light of the Chicken Rock (the most southerly 
 
136 TSB MASTER OF MAN 
 
 point of Man) was in the east; and for two miles round lay the 
 herring boats^ with their watch-lights burning on the roofs of their 
 net houseSj and looking like stars which had fallen from the 
 darkening sky on to the bosom of the sea. 
 
 Fenella began to sing, and before Stowell knew what he was 
 doing he was singing with her : 
 
 She: Oh Molla-caraine, where got you your gold? 
 He : Lone, lone, you have left me here. 
 
 It was entrancing — ^the hour, the surroundings, the charm and 
 sonority of the sea ! " But this is madness," thought Stowell. 
 It would only make it the harder to do — what he had to do. 
 
 Nevertheless he went on, and when they came to the end of 
 another Manx ballad Kiree fo naightey (the sheep under the snow) 
 he said: 
 
 " Would you like to know where that old song was written? " 
 
 " Where.? " 
 
 " In Castle Eushen — by a poor wretch whose life had been 
 sworn away by a vindictive woman." 
 
 " And what had he done to -her ? Betrayed her, and then de- 
 serted her for another woman, I suppose. That's the one thing 
 a woman can never forgive — ^never should, perhaps." 
 
 " I must tell her soon," thought Stowell. But he could think 
 of no way to begin — ^no natural way to lead up to what he had 
 to say. 
 
 The night was now very dark and silent. The majesty and 
 solemnity around were grand and moving. Fenella, who had been 
 laughing all the evening, was serious enough at last. 
 
 " It's almost as if the sea, grown old, had gone to sleep with 
 the going down of the sun, isn't it ? " she said. 
 
 " The sea isn't always like this, though," said Stowell. 
 
 " No, it can be very cruel, can't it? Rolling on and on, with 
 its incessant, monotonous roar through the ages ! What heartless 
 things it has done! Millions and millions of women have prayed 
 and it has no heed to them." 
 
 " How can I do it? How can I do it? " Stowell was asking 
 himself. 
 
 " O'h, what a thing it is to be a sailor's wife! " said Fenella. 
 " Only think of her with her little brood, in her cottage at Peel, 
 perhaps, when a sudden storm comes on! Giving the children 
 their supper and washing them and undressing them, and hearing 
 them say their prayers and hushing them to sleep, and then going 
 downstairs to the kitchen, and listening to the roar of the sea on 
 the castle rocks, and thinking of her man out here in the darkness, 
 struggling between life and death." 
 
THE ETERLASTINQ BONO OF TBE SEA 137 
 
 Stowell knew, though he dare not look, that she was brushing 
 her handkerchief over her eyes. 
 
 " Victor," she said, " don't you think women are rather brave 
 creatures? " 
 
 " The bravest creatures in the world! " he answered. 
 
 " I knew you would say that," said Fenella, in a low voice. 
 " And that's why I always think of you as their champion, fighting 
 their battles for them when they are wronged and helpless." 
 
 Stowell felt as if he were choking. He could not go on with 
 this hypocrisy any longer. He must tell her now. It would be 
 like committing suicide, but what must be, must be. 
 
 " Fenella. . . ." 
 
 But just then the loud voice of the Captain cried " Strike! " 
 and at the next moment Fenella was flying aft, to tug at the net 
 and shake out the herrings that came up with it. 
 
 What shouts ! What screams ! What peals of laughter ! 
 
 It was midnight before the joy and bustle of the catch were 
 over, and the net was shot again. The Governor was then smok- 
 ing his last pipe in the Captain's cabin, and Stowell, with Fenella 
 on his arm, was walking to and fro on the deck. 
 
 " Need I tell her at all ? " he was thinking. 
 
 He felt as if he were being swept along by an irresistible flood. 
 He could not doom himself to death. With Fenella by his side he 
 could think of nobody and nothing but her. Sometimes, when they 
 crossed the light from the skylight, they turned their faces to- 
 wards each other and smiled. 
 
 After a while Stowell found himself bantering Fenella. Catch- 
 ing a flash of her ring (his mother's ring) on the hand that was 
 on his arm, he pretended it was gone and asked if it had fallen 
 off while she was pulling at the net. 
 
 " Gone! The ring you ga — .... I mean the Deemster 
 gave me ! No, here it is ! What a shock ! I should have died 
 if I had lost it." 
 
 She was radiant ; he was reckless ; the little trick had uncovered 
 their hearts to each other. 
 
 They heard a step on the other side of the deck. 
 
 "Fenella!" 
 
 It was the Governor going down the companion. " Time to 
 turn in, girl ! We are to breakfast at Port St. Mary at nine in 
 the morning, you know." 
 
 " I'm coming, father." 
 
 " Good-night, Stowell! " 
 
 "Good-night, Sir!" 
 
 But he could not let Fenella go. It was a sin to go to bed at 
 
138 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 all on such a heavenly night. At last, at the top of the companion, 
 he loosed her arm, with a slow asundering, and said, 
 
 " The Governor says we are to breakfast at Port St. Mary — 
 do you think we shall if this calm continues? " 
 
 She laughed (her laugh seemed to come up from her heart) 
 and said, " I'm not worrying about that." 
 
 "No.?" 
 
 "When a woman has all she wants in the world in one place 
 why should she wish to go to another? " 
 
 " And have you? " 
 
 " Good-night ! " she said, holding out both hands. 
 
 He caught them, and the touch communicated fire. At the next 
 moment he had lifted her hand's to his lips. 
 
 She drew them down, and his hands with them, pressed them to 
 her breast and then broke away, and was gone in an instant. 
 
 Stowell gasped. " She loves me ! She loves me ! She loves me ! " 
 
 Nothing else mattered ! Let the world rip ! 
 
 II 
 
 Stowell did not go below that night. For two hours he tramped 
 the deck, laughing to himself like a lunatic. 
 
 " She loves me ! She loves me ! She loves me ! " 
 
 When the watch had to be changed at two o'clock he sent the 
 man to his berth and took his place. And when the dawn broke 
 and the lamps of the fishing fleet blinked out, and the boats showed 
 grey, like ghosts, on the colourless waste around, and the monoto- 
 nous chanting of the crews far and near told him the nets were 
 being hauled in, he shouted down the f o'c'sle for the men. And 
 when they came on deck he helped them to haul in their own net 
 and to empty their catch (it was the Governor's order) into the 
 first " Nickey " that came along. 
 
 The grey sky in the east had reddened to a flame by this time. 
 Then up from the round rim of the sea rose the everlasting sun, 
 and lo, it was day ! God, what an enchanted world it was ! All 
 the glory and maj esty of the sea seemed to be singing hymns to the 
 same tune as that of his own heart: 
 
 " She loves me ! She loves me ! She loves me ! " 
 
 A light wind sprang up, a cool blowing from the south, just 
 enough to ripple the surface of the water. Already some of the 
 fishing boats had swung about and were standing ofi" for home. 
 Stowell helped to haul the mainsail, and shouted with the men as 
 they pulled at the ropes and the white canvas rose above them. 
 
 " She loves me ! She loves me ! She loves me ! " 
 
THE EVERLASTING- SONG OF THE SEA 139 
 
 Within half an hour the wind had freshened to a summer gale 
 and they were running before a roaring sea. The sails bellied 
 out, the yacht listed over, the scuppers were half full of water, 
 but Stowell would not go below. For a long hour more he held on 
 and looked around at the fishing boats as they flew together in the 
 brilliant sunshine between the two immensities of sky and sea. 
 
 " She loves me ! She loves me ! She loves me ! " 
 Helloa ! Here was his own little island with the sun riding 
 over the mountain-tops ! The plunging and rearing of the yacht 
 gave the notion that the mountains were nodding to him. " Good 
 morning, son." What nonsense came into a man's head when 
 his heart was glad! 
 
 " She loves me ! She loves me ! She loves me ! " 
 
 Ah, here were the cliff's of the Calf, with their hoary heads in 
 the flying sky and their feet in the thunder of the sea ! And here 
 was the brovra-belted lighthouse of the Chicken Rock, which 
 Fenella and he had picked up last night ! And here was the shoul- 
 der of Spanish Head, and here was the belly of the Chasms, ring- 
 ing with the cry of ten thousand sea fowl ! 
 
 "She loves me ! She loves me ! She loves me ! " 
 
 Suddenly there came a shock. They were opening the bay of 
 Port St. Mary, with the little fishing town lying asleep along its 
 sheltered arm, when he saw across the Poolvaish (the pool of 
 death) the grey walls of Castle Rushen, and the long reach of 
 Langness. And then memory flowed back on him like a tidal wave. 
 
 Derby Haven ! The old maid's' house ! The girl burning her 
 candle in her bedroom to educate herself that she might become 
 worthy to be his wife! 
 
 "Oh God! Oh God!" 
 
 If Fenella loved him he had stolen her love. He had no right 
 to it, being married already, virtually married — boimd by every 
 tie that could hold an honourable man. 
 
 He felt like a traitor — a traitor to Fenella now. He recalled 
 what he had said last night. One step more and 
 
 Thank God, he had' gone no farther! If he had allowed 
 Fenella to engage herself to him, and then the facts about Bessie 
 Collister had become known, as they might have done through 
 Dan Baldromma 
 
 He must go. He must go immediately. His miserable mis- 
 take must not bring disgrace on Fenella also. 
 
 The yacht was sliding into the slack water of the bay, and the 
 row-boats of the fish-buyers, each flying its little flag, were coming 
 out to meet the fishing boai^, when Stowell went down to the 
 
140 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 saloon — still dark with its blue silk curtains over skylight and 
 portholes. 
 
 He took off his fisherman's clothes, put on his own, and sat 
 down at the table to scribble a note to the Governor: 
 
 " Excuse me! I must go up to Douglas by the first 
 train. Have just remembered an important engagement. 
 
 Hope to call at Government Office to-morrow." 
 
 As he was leaving the saloon he looked back towards the cabin 
 in which Fenella lay asleep. His eyes were wet, his heart 
 throbbed painfully, he felt as if he were being banished from her 
 presence as by a curse. Renunciation — life-long renunciation — 
 that was all that was left to him now. 
 
 The fleet were in harbour when he went on deck, a hundred 
 boats huddled together. And when he stepped ashore the fish 
 salesmen were selling the night's catch by auction, and the bronze- 
 faced and heavy-bearded fishermen, in their big boots, were count- 
 ing their herrings in mixed English and Manx: 
 
 " Nane, jeer, three, kiare, quieg .... warp, tally! " 
 
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN 
 
 THE woman's secret 
 
 When Stowell awoke next morning at Ballamoar a flock of 
 sheep, liberated from a barn, were bleating before a barking dog. 
 He had passed a restless night. All his soul revolted against the 
 renunciation he had imposed upon himself. It was like life-long 
 imprisonment. Yet what was he to do? He must decide and 
 decide quickly. 
 
 Suddenly he thought of the Governor. The strong sense and 
 practicaf wisdom of the Governor might help him to a decision. 
 But Fenella's father ! How could he tell his story to Fenella's 
 father ? 
 
 At last an idea came to him whereby he could obtain the Gover- 
 nor's counsel without betraying his secret. He was at the crisis. 
 On what he did now the future of his life depended. And not his 
 own life, only, but Fenella's also, perhaps, and .... Bessie 
 Collister's. 
 
 At three o'clock he was at the Government offices in Douglas. 
 Police inspectors were at the door and moving about in the 
 corridors. One of them took him up to the Governor's room — a 
 large chamber overlooking the street and noisy from the tram- 
 
THE WOMAN'S SECRET 141 
 
 cars that ran under the windows. The Governor's iron-grey head 
 was bent over a desk-table. 
 
 " Sit down — I shall not be long." 
 
 Stowell felt his heart sink in advance. Never would he be 
 able to say what he had come to say. 
 
 " Well, you gave us the slip nicely, didn't you? " said the 
 Governor, raising his head from his papers. 
 
 " I'm sorry. Sir," said Stowell (he felt his lip trembling). 
 " It was an important matter, and I've come to town to-day to ask 
 your advice on it." 
 
 " Something you've been consulted about? " 
 
 " WeU .... yes." 
 
 " I'm no authority on law, you know." 
 
 " It's not so much a matter of law. Sir, as of morality — ^what an 
 honourable man ought to do under difficult circumstances." 
 
 The Governor looked up sharply. Stowell struggled on. 
 
 " A client .... I should say a friend .... engaged him- 
 self to a young woman awhile ago, and now, owing to circumstances 
 which have arisen since, he finds it difficult to decide whether it is 
 his duty to marry her." 
 
 " Manxman? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "What class?" 
 
 Stowell felt his voice as well as his lips trembling. " Oh, 
 good enough class, I think." 
 
 The Governor picked up his pipe from the table, charged it, 
 lighted it, turned his chair towards the fireplace, threw his leg 
 over the rail- fender and said: 
 
 " Fire away." 
 
 Then trembling and ashamed, but making a strong call on his 
 resolution, Stowell told his own story — ^as if it had been that of 
 another man. 
 
 When he had come to an end there was a long silence. The 
 Governor pulled hard at his pipe and there was no other sound in 
 the room except the rattle of the tram-cars in the street. 
 
 Stowell felt hot, his lips felt dry, and pushing back his black 
 hair, he found sweat on his forehead. 
 
 " It was a sh-ocking blunder, of course," he said. " My man 
 doesn't defend himself. Still he thinks the circumstances . . . ." 
 
 " You mean it wasn't deliberate? " 
 
 "Good Lord, no!" 
 
 " In fact a kind of accident ? " 
 
 " One might say so." 
 
 " Any harm done ? " 
 
142 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Harm ? " Stowell turned white and began to stammer. " I 
 .... no, that is to say .... no, I've never heard . . . . " 
 
 " And yet he promised to marry the girl? " 
 
 " He felt responsible for her. He couldn't be a scoundrel." 
 
 " Did he care for her — love her ? " 
 
 " I can't say that. Sir. He might have thought he did." 
 
 " And now he loves another woman.? " 
 
 " With all his heart and soul. Sir." 
 
 " But " (the Governor was puffing placidly) " he has promised 
 to marry the little farm girl, and she's away somewhere educating 
 herself to become his wife.'' " 
 
 " That's it. Sir," said Stowell (his head was down), " and now 
 he is asking himself what it is his duty to do. I have told him it is 
 his duty as a man of honour to carry out his promise — ^to marry the 
 girl, whatever the consequences to himself. Am I right. Sir ? " 
 
 There was another moment of silence, and then the Governor, 
 taking his pipe out of his mouth, and bringing his open palm down 
 on the table, said: 
 
 "No!" 
 
 " No.? " 
 
 " It would be marrying the wrong woman, wouldn't it.' " 
 
 " Well .... yes, one might say that. Sir." 
 
 " Then it would be a crime." 
 
 " A crime? " 
 
 " A three-fold crime." 
 
 The Governor rose, crossed the floor, then drew up in front of 
 Stowell and spoke with sudden energy. 
 
 *' First, against the girl herself. She's an attractive young 
 person, I suppose, eh? " 
 
 Stowell nodded. 
 
 " But uneducated, illiterate, out of another world, as they say?" 
 
 Stowell nodded again. 
 
 " Then does your man suppose that by sending her to school 
 for a few months he will bridge the gulf between them ? Is that 
 bow he expects to make her happy? Ten to one the girl will be 
 a miserable outsider in her husband's house to the last day of her 
 life. But that's not the worst, by a long way." 
 
 "No?" 
 
 " If he marries her it will out of a sense of duty, will it not ? " 
 
 " Ye-es." 
 
 " Well, what woman on God's earth wants to be married out 
 of a sense of duty ? And if he loves another woman do you think 
 his wife will not find it out some day ? 'Of course she will ! And 
 when she does what do you think will happen ? I'll tell you what 
 
THE WOMAN'S SECRET 143 
 
 will happen. If she's one of the sensitive kind she'll feel herself 
 crushed, superfluous, and pine away and die of grief and shame, 
 or perhaps take a dose of something .... we've heard of such 
 happenings, haven't we ? And if she's a woman of the other sort 
 she'U go farther." 
 
 " You mean . . . ." 
 
 " Suspicion, jealousy, envy! She may not care a brass farth- 
 ing about her husband, but her pride as a wife will be wounded. 
 She won't give him a day's peace, or herself either. Hie'll never 
 be an hour out of her sight but she'll think he's with the other 
 woman. And then — ^what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the 
 gander! If he has another woman as likely as not she'll have 
 another man — we've heard of that, too, haven't we? " 
 
 Stowell dropped his head. His heart was beating high, and 
 he was afraid his face was betraying it. The Governor touched 
 him on the shoulder, and continued, 
 
 " In the next place, it would be a crime against the man him- 
 self. He's a young fellow of some prospects, I suppose ? " 
 
 " I .... I think so." 
 
 " And the girl has some family, hasn't she? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " They may be good and worthy folk of whom he would have 
 no reason to be ashamed. But isn't it j ust as likely that they are 
 people of quite another kidney ? Sisters and brothers and cousins 
 to the tenth degree? Some vulgar and rapacious old father, per- 
 haps, who hasn't taken too much trouble to keep the girl out of 
 temptation while she has been at home, but freezes on to her fast 
 enough after she has made a good marriage. Possible, isn't it? " 
 
 " Quite possible, «ir." 
 
 " Well, what are your man's own friends going to do with him 
 with a menagerie like that at his heels ? No, he has fettered him- 
 self for life to failure as well as misery, and while his wife is 
 railing at him about the other woman he is reproaching her with 
 standing in his light. So the end of his noble endeavour is that 
 he has set up a little private hell for himself in the house he calls 
 his home." 
 
 Stowell was wincing at every word, but all the same he knew 
 that his eyes were shining. The Governor looked sharply up at 
 him for a moment, lit his pipe afresh and said, 
 
 " Then there's the other woman. I suppose her case is worthy 
 of some consideration? " 
 
 " Indeed, yes." 
 
 " If she cares for the man . . . . " 
 
144 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " I can't say that. Sir." 
 
 " Well, if she does, she too will suffer, wiU she not ? And 
 what has she done to deserve suffering? Nothing at all! She's 
 the innocent scapegoat, isn't she? " 
 
 " That's true." 
 
 " Fine woman, I suppose ? " 
 
 " The finest woman in the world. Sir." 
 
 " Just so ! But your man would doom her to renunciation — a 
 solitary life of sorrow and regret. And so the only result of his 
 praiseworthy principles, his sense of duty, as you say, and all the 
 rest of it, is that he will have ruined three lives — ^the life of the 
 woman he marries and does not love, the life of the woman he 
 loves and does not marry, and his own life also." 
 
 " Then you think. Sir .... you think he should stop even 
 yet? " 
 
 " Even at the church door, at the altar^steps — if there's no 
 harm done, and he is sure she is the wrong woman." 
 
 Stowell felt as if the vapours which had clouded his brain so 
 long had been swept away as by a mountain breeze, but he thought 
 it necessary to keep up the disguise. 
 
 " I feel you must be right, sir," rising to go. " At all events 
 I cannot argue against you. But I think you'll agree that .... 
 that if my man can wipe out this bad passage in his life without 
 injury to anybody and without scandal .... I think you will 
 agree that his first duty is to tell the woman he loves . . . . " 
 
 " Eh? What the deuce .... Good heavens, no! " 
 
 " But surely he couldn't ask a pure-minded girl . . . . " 
 
 " To take the other woman's leavings ? Certainly he couldn't 
 if she knew anything about it. But why should she ? Why should 
 a pure-minded girl, as you say, be told about something that hap- 
 pened before she came on to the scene? " 
 
 Stowell's scruples were overcome. He had argued against 
 himself, but he knew well that he had wished to be beaten. He 
 was going off when the Governor, following him to the door, laid 
 a hand on his shoulder and said, 
 
 " When a man has done wrong the thing he has got to do next 
 is to say nothing about it. That's what your man has got to do 
 now. It's the woman secret, isn't it? Very well, he must never 
 reveal it to anybody — never, under any circumstances — ^never 
 in this world ! " 
 
 II 
 
 Next day, at Ballamoar, after many fruitless efforts to begin, 
 Stowell was writing to Bessie Collister. 
 
THE WOMAN'S SECRET 145 
 
 " Dear Bessie^ — I am sorry to send you this letter and it 
 is very painful for me to write it. But I cannot allow you to 
 look forward any longer to something which can never 
 happen. 
 
 "' The truth is — I must tell you the truth, Bessie — ^since 
 you went to Derby Haven I have found that I do not love 
 you as I ought, to become your husband. That being so, I 
 cannot do you the great wrong of marrying you. It would 
 not be either for your good or for mine. And since I cannot 
 marry you I feel that we must part. I am miserable when I 
 say this, but I see that in justice to you, as well as to myself, 
 nothing else can be .... " 
 
 He could go no further. A wave of tenderness towards Bessie 
 came over him. He had visions of the girl receiving and reading 
 his letter. It would be at night in her little bedroom, perihaps — 
 the room in which she burnt her candle to learn her lessons. 
 
 No, it would be too cruel, too cowardly. He would not write 
 — he would go to Derby Haven and break the news to the 
 girl himself. 
 
 But that evoked other and more fearful visions. They would 
 be walking along the sandy path at Langness with the stark white 
 lighthouse at the end of it. " Bessie," he would be saying, " We 
 must part; it will be better for both of us. It has all been my 
 fault. You have nothing to reproach yourself with. But you 
 must try to forget me, and if there is anything else I can do .... " 
 And then the reproaches, the recriminations, the tears, tiie sup- 
 plications, the appeals : " Don't throw me over ! You promised 
 to stand up for me, you know. I will be good." 
 
 It would be terrible. It would make his heart bleed. Never- 
 theless he must bear it. It was a part of his punishment. 
 
 He had torn up his letter and was putting his hand on the bell 
 to order the dog-cart to be brought round to take him to the rail- 
 way station, when a servant came into the room and said, 
 
 " Mr. AJick Gell to see you, sir." 
 
 Gell came in with a gloomy and half -shamefaced look. His 
 tall figure was bent, his fair hair was disordered, and his voice 
 trembled as he said, 
 
 " Can't we take a walk in the wood, old fellow? I have some- 
 thing to say." 
 
 " I don't know how to tell you," he began. They were cross- 
 ing the lawn towards the plantation. " Its about Bessie." 
 
 "Bessie?" 
 
 " I . . . . I'm madly in love with her." 
 10 
 
146 TEE MASTER OF MAW 
 
 Stowell stopped and looked without speaking into Gell's twitch- 
 ing face. 
 
 " I knew you wouldn't be able to believe it, but don't look at 
 me like that." 
 
 " Tell me," said Stowell. 
 
 And then, stammering and trembling, Gell told his story. He 
 didn't know how it began. Perhaps it was pity. He had been 
 sorry for the girl, over there in that lonely place, so he went down 
 at first just to cheer her up. Then he had found himself going 
 frequently, buying her presents and taking her out for walks. 
 When he had realised how things were he had tried to pull up, but 
 it was too late. He had struggled to be loyal — ^to strengthen 
 himself by talking of Stowell — praising him to the girl, excusing 
 him for not coming to see her — but it was useless. His pity had 
 developed into love, and before he had known what he was doing 
 Bessie was in his arms. At the next instant he had felt like a 
 traitor. He was frantically happy and yet he wanted to 
 kill himself. 
 
 " It was terrible," he said. " I couldn't sleep at night for 
 thinking of it. Bessie wanted you to be told. In fact she wrote 
 you a letter, saying we couldn't help loving each other, and asking 
 you to release her. But I couldn't let her go that far. ' Then go 
 to Ballamoar and tell him yourself,' she said. And at last I've 
 come. And now .... now you know." 
 
 Stowell listened in silence. His first feeling was one of 
 wounded pride. He had really been a great fool about the girl! 
 What fathomless depths of conceit had led him to think she would 
 break her heart if he gave her up ? And then the long struggle 
 between his love and his duty — ^what a mountebank Fate seemed 
 to have made of him ! But his next feeling was one of relief — 
 boundless, inexpressible relief. The iron chain he had been drag- 
 ging after him had been broken. He was free ! 
 
 Gell, who was breathing hard, was watching Stowell from 
 under his cap, which was pulled down over his forehead. They 
 were walking in a path that was thick with fallen leaves, and there 
 was no sound for some moments but that of the rustling under 
 their feet. 
 
 " Why don't you speak, old fellow? I've behaved like a cad, 
 I know. But for God's sake, don't torture me. Strike me in the 
 face with your fist. I would rather that — upon my soul, t would." 
 
 " Alick," said Stowell, putting his arm through Gell's. " I'm 
 going to tell you something." 
 
 " What.? " 
 
THE WOMAN'S SECRET 147 
 
 " Do you know what I was on the point of doing when you 
 came? Going down to Derby Haven to ask Bessie to let me off." 
 
 " Is that true? You're not saying it merely to ... . 
 But why?" 
 
 " Because what's happened to her has happened to me also — I 
 love somebody else." 
 
 "No? Eeally? .... But who .... who is the other girl ? 
 .... Is it ... . It's Fenella, isn't it? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " How splendid ! I'm glad ! And of course I congratulate you 
 .... No? .... You've not asked her yet? But that will 
 be all right — of course it wiU ! " 
 
 Taking off his cap to fan himself with, Grell broke into fits of 
 half hysterical laughter. Then he said: 
 
 " You don't mind my saying something now that it's all over ? 
 No ? Well, to tell you the truth I could never believe you really 
 cared for Bessie. I thought you were only marrjring her as a sort 
 of duty, having got her into trouble with Dan Baldromma. And it 
 was so — partly so — ^wasn't it? That didn't excuse me, though, 
 did it ? Lord, what a relief ! I feel as if you had lifted ten tons 
 off my head." 
 
 A dark memory came to Stowell. " Has she told him? " 
 
 " Bessie will be relieved, too, and just as glad as I am. Do 
 you know, there's a heart of gold in that girl. She's never had a 
 dog's chance yet. Not much education, I admit, but such 
 spirit, such character! Such a woman too — you said so your- 
 self, remember." 
 
 A still darker memory of something the Governor had said 
 came to Stowell. " Didn't you say Bessie had written to me ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " Yes, she did, yesterday; but I destroyed her letter." 
 
 " Do you know, I wrote to Bessie to-day, and I destroyed my 
 letter also." 
 
 " No ? What fun if your letters had crossed' in the post," said 
 Gell, and tossing his cap into the air, he broke into still louder 
 peals of laughter. 
 
 Again Stowell felt immense relief. It was impossible that 
 Bessie could have told him. And if she hadn't, why should he? 
 Why injure the girl in Gell's eyes ? Why tarnish his faith in her? 
 It was the woman's secret, therefore he must never reveal it — 
 never in this world. 
 
 They were walking on. Gell with a high step was kicking up 
 the withered leaves. 
 
 " What about your people? " asked Stowell. 
 
148 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Ah., that's -what I've got to find out. I'm going home now 
 to teU them. My mother is always advising me to marry and 
 settle down, but of course she'll jib at Bessie, and the sisters wiU 
 follow suit. As for my father, he has only one son, as he says, 
 and I must have a better allowance. He cut it down after that 
 affair in the Courts, you know." 
 
 They were at the gate to the road, and pulling it open, 
 Gell said: 
 
 " Phew ! How different I feel from what I did when I was 
 coming in here half an hour ago ! I thought you would kick me 
 out the minute I had told you. But now we're going to be better 
 friends than ever, aren't we? " 
 
 " Good-bye and good luck, old fellow," said Stoweli. 
 
 " Good-bye, and God bless you, old chap," said Gell. 
 
 StoweU stood at the gate and watched him going off with long 
 strides, his shoulders working vigorously. 
 
 " Never again ! We can never be the same friends again," 
 thought Stoweli, as he turned back to the house. 
 
 He was feeling like a man who in a moment of passion has 
 secretly wronged his life-long friend and can never look straight 
 into his eyes again. 
 
 But the sense of a barrier between Gell and himself was soon 
 wiped out by the memory of Fenella. He was free to love her at 
 last ! No more hypocrisy ! No more self-denial ! No more strug^ 
 gles between passion and duty! The past was dead. Life from 
 that day forward was beginning again for all of them. 
 
 " Was that Alick Gell in the wood with you ? " asked Janet, 
 who had come to the door to call StoweU in to tea. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Goodness me ! He must be a happy boy. He was laughing 
 enough, anyway." 
 
 Ill 
 
 StoweU went to bed early that night, slept soundly and was 
 up with the coming of light 'in the morning. 
 
 The farm lads were not yet astir, but going round to the stable 
 he saddled a horse for himself (a young chestnut mare that had 
 been born on one of his own birthdays) and set off for a ride 
 to relieve the intoxication of his spirits. 
 
 The air was keen, but both he and his horse sniffed it with 
 delight. As they passed out of Ballamoar the sun rose and played 
 among the red and yellow leaves of the plantation, for the sum- 
 mer was going out in a blaze of glory. They crossed the Curragh, 
 
THE WOMAN'S SECRET 149 
 
 dipped into the gleiij and climbed the corkscrew path to the 
 mountain. 
 
 Stowell thought he had never felt so well. And the little mare, 
 catching the contagion of his high spirits, snorted and swung her 
 head at every stride and dug her feet into the ringing ground. 
 
 " Helloa, Molly, here we are at the top ! " 
 
 Looking back he saw the flat plain below, dotted over with 
 farms, each with its little farmhouse surrounded by its clump of 
 sheltering trees. God, how good to think that every one of them 
 was a home of love ! Love ! That was the great uniter, the great 
 comforter, the great liberator, the great redeemer! 
 
 And to think that all this had been going on since the beginning 
 of the world! That generation after generation some boy had 
 eome up this lovely glen to court his girl! Lord, what a glorious 
 place the world was, after all ! 
 
 His eyes were beaming like the sunshine, and to make his j oy 
 complete he galloped over the mountain-tops until he came to a 
 point at which he could look down on Douglas and catch a glimpse 
 of Fenella's home in the midst of its trees. 
 
 " Peace in her chamber, wheresoe'er it he, 
 A holy place . . . . " 
 
 Then back to Ballamoar at a brisk canter, with the air musical 
 with the calls of cattle, the bleating of sheep and the songs of 
 birds. And then breakfast for a hungry man — cowrie and eggs and 
 fresh butter and honey and junket, which the Manx called pin jean. 
 
 At three o'clock in the afternoon he was on his way to Govern- 
 ment House, and by that time the intoxication of his high spirits 
 had suflTered a check. 
 
 What had Fenella thought of his flight from the yacht ? Had 
 she believed his excuse for it? What interpretation had she put 
 upon his intention of calling at Government Ofiices the following 
 day? And the Governor — ^had he seen through the thin disguise 
 of that story? 
 
 But the cruellest question of all, and the hardest to answer, was 
 whether after all, even now that he was free, he had any right to 
 ask Fenella to become his wife? He, a sin-soiled man, and she a 
 stainless woman! 
 
 He felt as if he ought to purge his soul by telling Fenella every- 
 thing. Yet how could he do that without inflicting an incurable 
 wound on her faith in him? And then what had the Governor 
 said? " Never under any circumstances." 
 
 As he walked up the carriage drive to Government House he 
 saw the Governor's tall figure, and the Attorney-General's short 
 
150 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 one, through the windows of the smoking-room. The Governor 
 came to the door to meet him. 
 
 " The very man we were talking about. Come in ! Sit down. 
 We have something to propose to you." 
 
 The Governor was going up to London on urgent business at 
 the Home Office and the Attorney had to go with him. In these 
 circumstances it had been necessary to arrange that the Court of 
 General Gaol Delivery (interrupted by the Deemster's death, but 
 now summoned to resume) should sit without the Governor, and 
 the Attorney had been suggesting that Stowell should represent 
 him in an important case. 
 
 " What is it. Sir ? " asked Stowell. 
 
 " Murder again, my boy ; but of a different kind this time." 
 
 A Peel fisherman had killed his wife with shocking brutality, 
 yet everybody seemed to sympathise with him, and there was a 
 danger that a Manx jury might let him off. 
 
 " Splendid opportunity to uphold law and order ! You'll take 
 the case? " 
 
 " With pleasure ! " 
 
 " Good ! The Attorney will send you the papers. And now, I 
 suppose, you would like to see Fenella? " 
 
 "May I.?" 
 
 " Why not.^ You'll find her in the drawing-room." 
 
 On his way to the drawing-room Stowell met Miss Green com- 
 ing out of it. She smiled at him, and said, in a half -whisper, 
 
 " I think you are expected." 
 
 When he opened the door he saw Fenella sitting with her back 
 to him at a little desk on one side of the bay window, with a glint 
 of its light on her bronze-brown hair. 
 
 " Who is it? " she said as he entered. But at the next 
 moment she seemed to know, and, rising, she turned round to 
 him and smiled. 
 
 He thought she had never looked so beautiful. He wanted to 
 crush her in his arms, and at the same time to fall at her feet 
 and kiss the hem of her dress. 
 
 There was a moment of passionate silence. H?e stepped to- 
 wards her but stopped when two or three paces away. A riot of 
 conflicting emotions were going on within him. He felt strong, he 
 felt weak, he felt brave, he felt cowardly, he felt proud, he 
 felt ashamed. 
 
 Still nothing was said by either of them. Her eyes were glis- 
 tening, she -was breathing quickly and her bosom was heaving. 
 He saw her moving towards him. Her hand was trailing along 
 the desk. He felt as if she were drawing him to her, and by a 
 
AT THE SPEAKER'S 151 
 
 ntJvous, but irresistible impulse he held out his arms. 
 
 " Fenella," he said, hardly audibly. 
 
 At the next moment, as in a flash of light, she sprang upon his 
 breast, and at the next her arms were about his neck, his own 
 were around her waist, her mouth was to his mouth, and the world 
 had melted away. 
 
 Ten minutes later, with faces aflame, they went, hand in hand, 
 into the smoking-room. The Grovernor wheeled about on his 
 revolving chair to look at them. 
 
 " Well," he said, " it's easy to see what you two have come 
 about. But not for six months ! I won't agree to a day 
 less, remember." 
 
 CHAPTER SIXTEEN 
 
 AT THE speaker's 
 
 Before Alick Gell reached his father's house another had been 
 there on the same errand. 
 
 Earlier in the afternoon Dan Baldromma, while running his 
 hands through the ground flour in the mill, with the wheel throb- 
 bing and the stones groaning about him, had been struck by a 
 new idea. 
 
 " Liza," lie said, returning to the dwelling house and standing 
 with his back to the fire and his big hands behind him, " that 
 young wastrel ought to be freckened into marrying the girl, and 
 I'm thinking I know the way to do it, too." 
 
 " It's like thou do, Dan," said Mrs. CoUister. 
 
 Dan's device was of the simplest. It was that of sending the 
 mother of Bessie CoUister to the mother of Alick Gell to threaten 
 and intimidate her. 
 
 " But sakes alive, man, that's an ugly job, isn't it? " 
 
 " It's got to be done, woman, or there'll be worse to do next, 
 I tell thee. Thou don't want to see thy daughter where her mother 
 was before her." 
 
 " Well, well, if I must, I must," said Mrs. CoUister. " But, 
 aw dear, aw dear ! If thou hadn't throvm the girl into the way of 
 temptation by shutting the door on her . . . . " 
 
 " Hould thy whist, woman, and do as I tell thee, and that will 
 be the best night's work I ever done for her." 
 
 Half an hour later, having swept the earthen floor, hung the 
 kettle on its sooty chain, and laid the table for Dan's tea, Mrs. 
 CoUister toUed upstairs to dress for her journey, and came down 
 in the poke bonnet and satin mantle which she wore to chapel 
 on Sunday. 
 
152 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Meantime Dan had harnessed the old mare to the stiff cart 
 and brought it round to the door. Having helped his wife over 
 the wheel and put the rope reins in her hauds^ he gave her his part- 
 ing instructions. 
 
 " See thou stand up for thy rights, now ! This is thy chance 
 and thou's got to make the best of it! " 
 
 " Aw well, we'U see," said the old woman, and then the stiff 
 cart rattled over the cobbled " street " on its way to the Speaker's. 
 
 In her comfortable sitting-room, thickly carpeted and plenti- 
 fully cushioned, Mrs. Gell was awakened from her afternoon nap 
 by the scream of the peacocks. 
 
 " It's Mistress Daniel Collister of Baldromma to see you, 
 ma'am," said the maid. 
 
 At the next moment, Mrs. Collister, vrith a timid air, hobbled 
 into the room on her stick, and the two mothers came face to face. 
 
 " You wish to speak to me," said Mrs. Gell. 
 
 " If you plaze, ma'am," said Mrs. Collister, huskily. 
 
 Isabella Gell, a sour-faced young woman, came into the room 
 and stood behind her mother's chair. Mrs. Collister took the seat 
 that was assigned to her, and fumbled the ribbons of her bonnet to 
 loosen them. 
 
 " It's about my daughter, ma'am." 
 
 " WeU.? " 
 
 " My daughter and your son, ma'am." 
 
 "Eh?" 
 
 " Cffisar Qualtrough of the Kays has seen them together. 
 They're living down Castletown way, they're saying." 
 
 " Living .... my son and your daughter? " 
 
 " So they're saying, ma'am." 
 
 " I don't believe it ! I don't believe a word of it ! " 
 
 " I wish in my heart I could say the same, ma'am. But it's 
 truth enough, I'm fearing." 
 
 " And if it is — I don't say it is, but if it is — ^why have you 
 come to me? " 
 
 Then trembling all over, Mrs. Collister continued her story. 
 Her poor girl was in trouble. When a girl was in trouble the 
 world could be cruel hard on her. Nobody would think the cruel 
 hard it could be. If a girl did wrong it was because somebody 
 she was fond of had promised to inarry her. What else would she 
 do it for ? When a young man had behaved like that to a poor girl 
 he ought to keep his word to her. And if he had a mother, and 
 she was a good Christian woman .... 
 
 Mrs. GeU, who was beating her foot on the carpet, broke 
 in impatiently. 
 
AT TEE SPEAKEB'8 153 
 
 " In short, you think my son ought to marry your daughter? " 
 
 " It's nothing but right, ma'am." 
 
 " And you've come here to ask me to teU him to do so? " 
 
 " If you plaze, ma'am." 
 
 " Well, I never ! " said Isabella. 
 
 " She's a mother herself, I was thinking, and if one of her 
 own girls was in the same position . . . . " 
 
 " The idea! " said Isabella. 
 
 " Mrs. Collister," said Mrs. Gell, with a proud lift of her 
 head, " I was sorry when I heard of the trouble your daughter 
 had brought on you, but what you are doing now is a piece of 
 great assurance." 
 
 " But Bessie is a good girl, ma'am. And if she married your 
 son you would never have raison to be ashamed of her." 
 
 " Good indeed ! If a girl isn't ashamed to be living with a 
 young man the less said about her goodness the better." 
 
 " Aw well, ma'am," said Mrs. CoUister (her faltering tongue 
 had become firmer and her timid eyes had begun to flash), " if 
 she's living with the young man, he's living with her, and the 
 shame is the same for both, I'm thinking." 
 
 Mrs. Gell drew herself up in her chair. , 
 
 " I'm astonished at you, Mrs. Collister ! A woman yourself, 
 and not seeing the difference." 
 
 " Aw yes, difference enough, ma'am! And when a young man 
 doesn't keep his word it's the woman that's knowing it best by 
 the trouble that's coming on her." 
 
 Mrs. GeU, whose anger was rising, lifted her chin again 
 and said, " If your daughter is in trouble, Mrs. Collister, how 
 are we to know that she had not brought it on her own head, just 
 to get AUck to marry her ? " 
 
 " The creature ! " said Isabella. 
 
 " And how are we to know that you and your husband have 
 not encouraged the girl in her wickedness just to get our son for 
 your son-in-law? " 
 
 " Aw well, ma'am," said Mrs. CoUister (she was fumbling at 
 the strings of her bormet to tighten them), " if you are thinking 
 as bad of me as that . . . . " 
 
 " You talk of the danger to your daughter if my son doesn't 
 marry her," said Mrs. Gell. " But what of the danger to my son 
 if he does? His life will be ruined. He will never be able to 
 raise his head in the island again. His father will disown him. 
 Marry your daughter indeed! Not only will I not ask him to 
 marry her, but if I see the slightest danger of his doing any- 
 thing so foolish I will do everything I can to prevent it." 
 
154 THiS MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Aw well, we'll say no more, ma'am," said! Mrs. Collister, and 
 she shuffled to her feet. 
 
 But Mrs. Gell was up before her. 
 
 " Alexander Gell, son of the Speaker and grandson of Arch- 
 deacon Mylechreest, married to the step-daughter of Dan Bal- 
 dromma and the nameless offspring of Liza Collister . . . . " 
 
 " Ma'am ! " 
 
 Mrs. Collister had hobbled to the door, and was going out, 
 humbled and beaten, when Mrs. Gell's last words cut her to the 
 quick. For more than twenty years she had taken the punish- 
 ment of her own sin and bowed her head to the lash of it, but 
 at this insult to her child the weak and timid creature turned about, 
 as brave as a lion and as fierce as a fury. 
 
 " I'm not your quality, I know that, ma'am," she said, breath- 
 ing quickly, " but a day is coming, and maybe it's near, when we'll 
 be standing together where we'll both be equal. Just two old 
 mothers, and nothing else between us. If you've loved your son, 
 I've loved my daughter, whatever she is, ma'am. And when the 
 One who reads all hearts is after asking me what I did for my 
 child in the day of her trouble, I'll be telling Him I came here to 
 beg you on my knees to save her from a life of sin and shame, and 
 you wouldn't, because your worldly pride prevented. And then 
 it's Himself, ma'am, will be judging bei^veen us! " 
 
 II 
 
 There had been a sitting of the Keys that day, and when the 
 Speaker returned home he found his wife on the sofa with a damp 
 handkerchief over her forehead and a bottle of smelling-salts in 
 her hand. She told him what had happened. 
 
 " Well, well," he said, " so that's what it means. But there's 
 no knowing what hedge the hare wiU jump from." 
 
 His figure was less burly than before, his head was more bald 
 £ind his full beard was whiter, but his eyes flashed with the same 
 ungovernable fire. 
 
 " That girl must be a thoroughly bad one," said Mrs. Gell. 
 " It's not the first time she has got our Alick into trouble, remem- 
 ber. We must save our son from the designing young huzzy." 
 
 " Tut! It's not the girl I'm troubling about." 
 
 "Who else, then?" 
 
 " The man ! I might have expected as much, though ! " 
 
 Coming home in the train he had had some talk with Kerruish, 
 his advocate and agent. Dan Baldromma, who was back with his 
 
AT THE SPEAKER'S 155 
 
 rent, was refusing to pay, and saying " Let the Spaker fetch me 
 to Coort, and I'll tell him the raison." 
 
 " Then can't you settle with the man, Archie ? " 
 
 " Settle with Dan? I'll settle with Alick first, Bella, and if he 
 has given that scoundrel the whip hand of me I'll break every 
 bone in his body." 
 
 " But it may not be true. It cannot be true. Unless Alick 
 tells me so himself I'll never believe a word of it." 
 
 They were at tea in the dining-room, country fashion, the 
 Speaker at the head of the table with a plate of fish before him, 
 and his wife and daughters at either side, when Alick entered. 
 
 " Helloa ! " he cried, with a forced gaiety. But only his 
 mother responded to his greeting and made room for him by her 
 side. She saw that he was paler and thinner, and that his hand 
 trembled when he took his cup. 
 
 The Speaker, who had turned his rough shoulder to his son, 
 tried to restrain himself from breaking out on him imtil the meal 
 would be over and he could take him into his own room, but before 
 long his impatience overcame him. 
 
 " What's this we're hearing about you — that you are carrying 
 on with a girl? " 
 
 " Do you mean Bessie Collister, Sir ? " said Alick. 
 
 " Certainly I mean Bessie Collister. And I thought you gave 
 me your word that you would see no more of her." 
 
 " But that was the promise of a boy. Sir. Did you expect it 
 to bind the man also ? " 
 
 " The man ? The man ! " said the Speaker, mimicking his son's 
 voice in a mincing treble. " Do you call yourself a man, bringing 
 disgrace on your name and family." 
 
 "What disgrace. Sir?" 
 
 " What disgrace ? AU the island seems to have heard of it. 
 Is it necessary to tell you? Living secret, so they say, with a 
 woman who isn't fit company for your mother and sisters." 
 
 " If anybody told you that. Sir," said Alick (his lower lip was 
 trembling), " he told you a lie — a damned lie. Sir! " 
 
 " There ! " cried Mrs. Gell, turning to her husband. " What 
 did I say? It isn't true, you see." 
 
 " Of course it isn't true, mother; and the best proof that I'm 
 not behaving dishonourably to Bessie Collister is that I intend to 
 marry her." 
 
 It was a sickening moment for Mrs. Gell, and the Speaker, for 
 an instant, was dumbfounded'. 
 
 "Eh? What? You intend to marry . . . . " 
 
 " Yes, Sir; and that's why I'm here to-day — ^to bring you the 
 
156 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 news, and to ask you to restore the allowance you cut down in the 
 spring, you know." 
 
 " That .... that .... that bast — . . . . " 
 
 " Archie ! " cried Mrs. Gell, indicating their daughters. 
 
 " Bessie is a good girl, father," said Alick. " What happened 
 before she was born wasn't her fault, Sir." 
 
 " So you've come to bring us the news and to ask me to double 
 your allowance.'' " 
 
 " If you please. Sir. You couldn't wish your son and his 
 wife . . . . " 
 
 " His wife ! There you are, Bella ! That's what I've been 
 working day and night thirty years for — ^to see my son throw half 
 my earnings — all that I can't will away from him — ^into the hands 
 of a man like Dan Baldromma! " 
 
 " But Alick will be reasonable," said Mrs. Gell. " He'll give 
 the girl up." 
 
 " He'll have to do that, and quick too, or I'll cut off his allow- 
 ance altogether." 
 
 " Do you mean it, Sir? " said Alick — he was pushing his 
 chair back. 
 
 " Do I mean it.'' Certainly I mean it. You'll give the girl up 
 or never another penny of mine shall you see as long as I live ! " 
 
 " All right," said Alick, rising from the table, " I'll earn my 
 own living." 
 
 The Speaker broke into a peal of scornful laughter. " You 
 earn your living! That's rich! " 
 
 " Give her up? " cried Alick. " I'll break stones on the high- 
 way or porter on the pier before I'll give up her little finger! " 
 
 "You fool! You confounded fool! But no feax! She'U 
 give you up when she finds you've lost your income." 
 
 " Will she? I'll trust her for that. Sir." 
 
 " Then get away back to her — you'll not be the first by a 
 long way." 
 
 Alick, who had been trying to laugh, stopped his laughter sud- 
 denly, and said, " What do you mean by that. Sir ? " 
 
 " Mean? Do you want me to tell you what I mean? " 
 
 " Archie," cried Mrs. Gell, and again she indicated their 
 daughters. 
 
 " Gret out of this, will you? " cried the Speaker to the girls, 
 who had been sitting with their noses in their teacups. 
 
 The girls fled from the room, but stood outside to listen. 
 
 " Father," said Alick, " you must tell me what you mean." 
 
 " Mean ! Mean ! Don't stand there cross-examining your own 
 
THE BURNINa BOAT 157 
 
 father. You know what I mean! If half they say about the 
 young b — .... is true she's fit enough for it, anyway." 
 
 " If any other man had said that," said Alick, quivering, " I 
 should have knocked him down. Sir." 
 
 " What's that!* You threaten me? " cried the Speaker. His 
 voice was like the scream of a sea-gull, and making a step to- 
 wards Alick he lifted his clenched fist to >him. 
 
 Mrs. Gell intervened, and Alick retreated a pace or two. 
 
 " Take care. Sir," he said. " You can't treat me like that 
 now. I'm not a child ajiy longer." 
 
 " Then get away to your woman .... and to hell, if you 
 want to." 
 
 " Tihere was no need to tell me twice. Sir. I'm going. And as 
 God is my witness, I'll never set foot in this house again." 
 
 At the next moment the peacocks were screaming outside, and 
 the Speaker, who had thrown up the window, was shouting through 
 it in a broken roar, 
 
 "Alick! Alick Gell! Come back, you damned scoundrel! 
 Alick! Alexander . . . . " 
 
 They had to carry him upstairs and send for Dr. Clucas. It 
 had been another of his paralysing brain-storms. It was not to 
 be expected that he could bear many more of them. 
 
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 
 
 THE BURNING BOAT 
 
 Two days later, Gell was stepping into the train for Castle- 
 town on his way to Derby Haven. 
 
 " Give me up because my income is gone .'' Not Bessie ! Not 
 Bessie Collister ! " 
 
 But Bessie had gone through deep waters since he had seen 
 her last. 
 
 From the first Victor StoweU had disappointed her. To live 
 in the dark — ^hidden away, unrecognised, suppres'sed — ^it had not 
 been according to her expectations. Her pride, too, had been 
 wounded by being sent back to school. It was true that without 
 being asked, Mr. StoweU had promised to marry her at some 
 future time, but perhaps that was only because he was the son of 
 the Deemster and therefore afraid of her step-fafher and of the 
 cry there would be all over the island if anything became known. 
 
 If it had only been Alick ! Alick would not have been ashamed 
 of her. He would have taken 'her just as she was and never seen 
 any shortcomings. 
 
158 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 After tlie first days at Derby Haven she had found herself 
 looking forward to Alick's visits. When she knew he was coming 
 everything brightened up in her eyes and even her tiresome lessons 
 became delightful. Before long she felt her heart leap up when- 
 ever the Misses Brown called, " Bessie, a gentleman to see you! " 
 
 It is easy to kindle a fire on a warm hearth. Alick had been 
 Bessie's first sweetheart, perhaps her only one. Suddenly a won- 
 derful thing happened to her. She found herself in love. She had 
 thought she had always been in love with somebody, but now she 
 realized that she had never been in love before. She was in love 
 witli Alick Gell. And she wished to become his wife. 
 
 That altered everything. She began to see how ignorant she 
 was compared with Alick and how much she was beneath him. 
 She remembered his tliree tall sisters who held their heads so high 
 at anniversaries and bazaars, and thought what a shocking thing 
 it would' be if they were able to look down on her. How she 
 worked to be worthy of him ! 
 
 She had no qualms about Stowell. Her only anxiety was 
 about Alick. She was certain that he loved her, yet what a, fight 
 she had for him ! ■ He was always talking about Stowell, and 
 praising him up to her. When he excused his friend for not 
 coming to see her she was quite sure it was all nonsense. And 
 when he gave her presents and said they were from Stowell she 
 knew where they oame from. 
 
 One day he brought a wrist-watch with the usual message, and 
 after he had put it on (how his hands were trembling!) she tried 
 to thank him, but didn't know how to do so. 
 
 At last an idea occurred to her. They were walking on the 
 Langness, just by the ruin of a windmill, whose walls and roof had 
 been carried away by a gale. 
 
 " Alick," she said, " I wonder if my new watch is right by the 
 clock at Castle Rushen? " 
 
 Alick put his hands to his eyes like blinkers (for the sun was 
 setting) and looked across the bay. While he did so, Bessie 
 slipped off on tiptoe and hid behind the walls of the windmill. As 
 soon as she was missed there was a laugh and a shout and then a 
 chase. Bessie dodged and Alick doubled, Bessie dodged again, 
 but at length she slipped into a hole, and at the next moment Alick 
 caught her up and kissed her. 
 
 " Now, what have you done? " she said, and her face was 
 suffused with blushes. 
 
 After that there could be no disguise between them. Bessie 
 felt no shame, and it never occurred to her tliat she had been guilty 
 of treason. But Gell talked about disloyalty and said he would 
 
TEE BURNINe BOAT 159 
 
 never be at ease until she had made a clean breast of it to Stowell. 
 
 " Then go and tell him we couldn't 'help loving each other,' 
 slie said. 
 
 When he was gone she was very happy. Mr. Stowell would 
 give her up. Of course he would. What had happened between 
 them was dead and buried. Whatever else he was Victor StoweU 
 was a gentleman. He would say nothing to Alick. 
 
 Then came a shock. On the following morning she felt unwell. 
 She had often felt unwell since she came to Derby Haven, and the 
 Misses Brown, simple old maids, seeing no cause except the change 
 in the girl's way of life, wanted to send for a doctor. But doctors 
 were associated in Bessie's mind with death. If you saw a doctor 
 going into a farmhouse one day you saw a coffin going in the next. 
 
 Chemists were not open to the same objection. Often on 
 market days, after she had sold out her basket of butter and eggs, 
 she had called at the chemist's at Ramsey for medicine for her 
 mother. So, saying nothing to her housemates, she slipped round 
 to the chemist's at Castletown and asked for a bottle of mixture. 
 
 The chemist, an elderly man with a fatherly face, smiled at 
 her, and said: 
 
 " But what is it for, miss ? " 
 
 Bessie described her symptoms, and then the smiling face 
 was grave. 
 
 " Are you a married woman, ma'am.'' " asked the chemist. 
 
 Bessie caught her breath, stared at the man for a moment with 
 eyes full of fear, and then turned and fled out of the shop. 
 
 All that day she felt dizzy and deaf. The earth seemed to be 
 slipping from under her. Memories of what she had heard from 
 older women came springing to the surface of her mind, and she 
 asked herself why she had not thought of this before. For a long 
 time she struggled to persuade herself that the chemist was wrong, 
 but conviction forced itself upon her at last. 
 
 Then she asked herself what she was to do, and remembering 
 what she had learned as a child at home of her mother's miserable 
 life before her marriage, she found only one answer to that ques- 
 tion. She must ask Mr. Stowell to marry her. The thought of 
 parting from Alick was heart-breaking. But the most terrible 
 thing was that she found herself hoping that Stowell would refuse 
 to release her. 
 
 It had been a wretched day, dark and cheerless, with driving 
 mist and drizzling rain. Tbwards nightfall the old majds lighted 
 a fire for her in the sitting-room, which was full of quaint nick- 
 nacks and old glass and china. The tide, which was at the bottom 
 
160 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 oi the ebb, was sobbing against the unseen breakwater, and the 
 gulls on the cobbles of the shore were calling continually. 
 
 Bessie was crouching over the fire with her chin in her hand 
 when she heard the sneck of the garden gate, a quick step on the 
 gravel, a light knock at the front door, a familiar voice in the 
 lobby, and then old Miss Ethel saying behind her : 
 
 " A gentleman to see you, Bessie." 
 
 Her heart did not leap up as before, and she did not rise with 
 her former alacrity, but Alick Gell came into the room like a 
 rush of wind. 
 
 " What's this — ^unwell? " he cried. 
 
 " It's nothing ! I shall be better in the morning," she said. 
 
 " Of course you will." 
 
 And then, after a kiss, Gell sat on a low stool at Bessie's 
 feet, stretched his long legs towards the fire, and began to pour 
 out his story. 
 
 He had seen Stowell and the matter had turned out just as she 
 had expected. Splendid fellow ! Best chap in the world, bar none ! 
 
 " But what do you think, Bess .'' The most extraordinary coin- 
 cidence! Dear old Vic, he has been busy falling in love, too! 
 Fact! Fenella Stanley, daughter of the Governor! Magnificent 
 girl, and Vic is madly in love with her ! So there's to be no heart- 
 breaking on either side, and that's the best of it. Makes one think 
 there must be something in Providence, doesn't it? " 
 
 He was laughing so loud that the china in the room rang, but 
 Bessie was turning cold with terror. 
 
 " And .... what about your father ? " she faltered. 
 
 "My father?" 
 
 " Well .... to teU you the truth there was a bit of a breeze 
 there," he said, and then followed the story of the scene at 
 the Speaker's. 
 
 " But no matter ! I'm not without money, so we can be mar- 
 ried at once, and the sooner the better." 
 
 " But Alick," she said (he was stroking her hand and she was 
 trying to draw it away), " do you think it's best? " 
 
 " Best? Why, of course I think it's best. Don't you? " 
 
 She did not reply. 
 
 " Don't you ? " he said again, and then, getting no answer, he 
 became aware that she, who had been so eager for their marriage 
 before he went to Ballamoar, was now holding back. 
 
 " Bessie," he said, " has anything happened while I've been 
 away? " 
 
 "No! Oh no!" 
 
TEE BUBNINa BOAT 161 
 
 " You're .... you're not thinking of the loss of the income, 
 are you? " 
 
 " No, no; 'deed, no! " 
 
 " I knew you wouldn't. When my father taunted me with 
 that, saying you would give me up as soon as you knew my allow- 
 ance was gone, I said, ' Not Bessie! I'll trust her for that. Sir.' " 
 
 Bessie began to cry. Alick was bewildered. 
 
 " What is it, then } Tell me ! Are you .... are you think- 
 ing of StoweU?" 
 
 At that name she was seized by the mad impulse which comes 
 to people on dizzy heights when they wish to throw themselves 
 over — she wanted to blurt out the truth, to confess everything. 
 But before she could speak Alick was saying, 
 
 " I shouldn't blame you if you were. I'm not his equal — I 
 know that, Bessie. But even if he were free I shouldn't give you 
 up to him now. No, by Grod, not to him or to anyone. 
 
 His voice was breaking. She looked at him. There were tears 
 in his eyes. She oould bear up no longer. With the cry of a 
 drowning soul she flung her arms about him and sobbed on 
 his breast. 
 
 An hour later, having comforted and quietened her, Gell was 
 going oif with swinging strides through the mist to catch the 
 last train back to Douglas. 
 
 " She was thinking of me — ^that was it," he was telling him- 
 self. " Thought I would come to regret the sacrifice and wanted 
 to save me from being cut off by my family. So unselfish ! Never 
 thinking of herself, bless her ! " 
 
 And Bessie, in her bedroom was saying to herself, " He's that 
 fond of me that he'll forgive me, whatever happens." 
 
 She lay a long time awake, with her arm.s under her head, 
 looking up at the ceiling. 
 
 " Yes, Alick will forgive me, whatever happens," she thought. 
 
 And then she blew out her candle, buried her head in her 
 pillow, and fell asleep. 
 
 II 
 
 When Gell reached the railway-station he found the carriages 
 waiting at the platform, half-full of impatient passengers. A 
 trial, which was going on in the Castle, was nearing its close, and 
 the station-master had received orders that the last train to town 
 was to be kept back for the Judges and advocates. 
 
 " The Peel fisherman," thought Gell. And, remembering that 
 this was the case in which StoweU was to represent the Attorney- 
 11 
 
162 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 General, he walked over to the Court-house, whose lantern-light 
 was showing like a hazy white cloud above the Castle walls. 
 
 The little place was thick with sea mist, hot with the acid 
 odour of perspiration, and densely crowded but breathlessly silent. 
 The trial was over, the prisoner had been found guilty, and the 
 Deemster (it was Deemster Taubman, sitting with the Clerk of the 
 Rolls as Acting Grovernor) was beginning to pronounce sentence: 
 
 " Prisoner at the bar, it will be my duty to communicate to the 
 proper quarter the Jury's recommendation to mercy, but I can 
 hold out no hope that it wiU be of any avail. You have been 
 found guilty of the wilful murder of your wife, therefore I bid 
 you prepare . . . . " 
 
 And then followed those dread words in that dead stillness, 
 which bring thoughts of the day of doom. 
 
 Gell caught one glimpse of the prisoner, as he stood in the dock, 
 in his fisherman's guernsey, looking steadfastly into the face of 
 his Judge, and another glimpse as a way was cleared through 
 the spectators and he walked with a strong step to the door leading 
 to the cells. 
 
 Then the court-house cleared to a low rumble that was like the 
 muifled murmuring that is heard after a funeral. 
 
 Gell asked for Stowell, and was told that his friend had gone 
 down to the Deemster's room with one of the advocates for the 
 defence to draw up the terms of the recommendation. Therefore 
 he returned to the station with a group of his fellow advocates, 
 and on the way back he heard the story of the trial — little knowing 
 ing how close it was to come to him. 
 
 The prisoner (his name was Morrison) had married the mur- 
 dered woman in the winter. She had been a comely girl who had 
 always borne a good character. On their wedding morning they 
 had received many presents, one of them being a fishing-boat. 
 This had been the gift of a distant relation of the bride's, a 
 middle-aged man who had since married a rich widow. 
 
 At Easter, Morrison had gone off with the fleet to the mack- 
 erel fishing at Kinsale, and while there he had received an anony- 
 mous letter. It told him that his young wife had given birth, 
 less than six months after their marriage, to a still-bom child. 
 
 Morrison had said nothing about the letter, but he had made 
 inquiries about the man who had given him the boat, and been told 
 that he had borne a bad reputation. 
 
 At the end of the mackerel season Morrison had returned to the 
 island with the rest of the fleet, and for everybody else there had 
 been the usual joyful homecoming. 
 
 It had been late at night on the first of June, when the stars 
 
THE BURNING BOAT 163 
 
 were out and the moon was in its first quarter. As soon as the 
 boats had been sighted outside the Castle Rock the sound signal had 
 gone up from the Rocket House, and within five minutes the fisher- 
 men's wives had come flying down to the quay, with their little 
 shawls thrown over their heads and pinned under their chins. 
 
 Then, as the boats had come gliding into harbour, there had 
 been the shrill questions of the women ashore and the deep-toned 
 answers of the man afloat: 
 
 " Are you there. Bill.? " " Is it yourself, Nancy? " 
 
 Some of the yoimger women, who had had babies bom while 
 their husband's had been away, had brought them down with them, 
 and one young wife, holding up her little one for her man to see, 
 by the light of the moon and the harbour-master's lantern, 
 had cried: 
 
 " Here he is, boy! What do you think of him? " 
 
 Almost before the boats could be brought to their moorings the 
 fishermen had leapt ashore in their long boots and gone oS home 
 with their wives, laughing and talking. 
 
 Morrison had not gone. His wife had not been down to meet 
 him. Somebody had shouted from the quay that she was still 
 keeping her bed and was waiting at home for him. But he had 
 been in no hurry to go to her. When everything was quiet he had 
 shouldered his boat to the top of the harbour, unstepped her mast, 
 and rvm her ashore on the dry bank above the bridge. 
 
 Then going back to the quay, which was now deserted, he had 
 broken the padlock of an open yard for ship's stores, taken posses- 
 sion of a barrel of pitch, rolled it down to the bank by the bridge, 
 fixed it xmder his boat, pulled' out its plug, applied a match to it, 
 and then waited until both barrel and boat were afire and burn- 
 ing fiercely. 
 
 After that he had walked home through the little sleeping town 
 to his house in the middle of a cobweb of streets at the back of the 
 beach. Opening the door (it had been left on the latch for him) 
 he had bolted it on the inside, and then going to the bedroom and 
 finding his young wife in bed, with a frightened look under a timid 
 smile, he had charged her with her unchastity, compelled her to 
 confess to it, and then strangled her to death with his big hands 
 — ^the marks of his broad thumbs, black with tar, being on her 
 throat and bosom. 
 
 In the middle of the night the fishermen who lived in the streets 
 nearest to the harbour, awakened by a red glow in their bedrooms, 
 had said to their wives : 
 
 " What for are they burning the gorse on Peel hill at this time 
 of the year? " 
 
164 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 But others, who were neighbours of Morrison's, having heard 
 cries from his house in the night, had' gathered in front of his door 
 in the morning, and, getting no answer to their knocking, had burst 
 it open and found the woman lying dead on the bed and the man 
 huddled up on the floor at the foot of it. And when they had 
 pushed him and roused him he had lifted his haggard face and said, 
 
 " I've killed my sweetheart." 
 
 Such was the fisherman's story, and when the defence had con- 
 cluded their case, asking for an acquittal on the ground of unbear- 
 able moral provocation, and saying that never could there have 
 been better grounds for the application of the unwritten law, the 
 Jury was obviously impressed, and somebody at the back of the 
 court was saying, 
 
 " If they hang him for that they'll hang a man for anything." 
 
 Against this sympathy for the accused, Stowell had risen to 
 make his reply for the Crown. 
 
 He did not deny the dead woman's transgression. It was true 
 that she must have known when she married the prisoner that she 
 was about to become the mother of a child by another man. But 
 if that moral fact could be urged against the wife, was there noth- 
 ing of the same kind that could be advanced in her favour? 
 
 She had been cruelly betrayed' and abandoned. Looking to the 
 future she had seen the contempt of her little world before her. 
 What had happened.^ In the dark hour of her desertion the pris- 
 oner had come with the oJTer of his love and protection. It was in 
 evidence that for a time she had held back and that he had pressed 
 himself upon her. None could know the secret of the dead 
 woman's soul, but was it unreasonable to think that standing be- 
 tween the two fires of public scorn and' the prisoner's affection she 
 had said to herself, as poor misguided women in like cases did 
 every day: " He loves me so much that he will forgive me what- 
 ever happens." 
 
 But had he forgiven her? No, he had killed her, wilfully, 
 cruelly, brutally, not in the heat of blood, but after long delibera- 
 tion — ^he, the big powerful brute and she the weak, helpless, half- 
 naked woman — the woman who had been faithful to him since the 
 day he married her, the woman he had sworn to love and cherish 
 until death parted them. 
 
 No, the plea of moral justification was rotten to the heart's 
 core, and had nothing to say for itself in a Court of Law. The 
 defence had urged that it was foimded on the laws of nature — 
 that marriage implied chastity on the woman's part, and this 
 woman had come to her husband unchaste. On the contrary, it 
 was founded on the barbarous law of man — ^the infamous theory 
 
THE BVRNINa BOAT 165 
 
 that a wife was the property of her husband and he was at liberty 
 to do as 'he liked with her. 
 
 A wife was not the property of her husband. He was not at 
 liberty to do as he liked with her. There was no such thing as 
 the unwritten law. What was not written was not law. And if, 
 as the result of the verdict in that court, it should go forth that 
 any man had a right to kill his wife in any circumstances — ^to. be 
 judge and jury and accuser and executioner over her — ^the reign of 
 law and order in this island would be at an end, no woman's life 
 would be secure, the daughter of no member of that jury would 
 any longer be safe, and human society would dissolve into -a welter 
 of civilised savagery — ^the worst savagery of all. 
 
 The effect of Stowell's reply had been overwhelming. The 
 jury had either been frightened or convinced, and even the pris- 
 oner himself, during the more intimate passages, had held down his 
 head as if he felt himself to be the vilest scoundrel on earth. 
 
 Among the advocates (they had reached the station by this 
 time, got into their carriages, and lit up their pipes) opinion was 
 more divided. The younger men were enthusiastic, but some of 
 the older ones thought the closing speech for the Crown had been 
 false in logic and bad in law. 
 
 One of the latter, with a special cock of the hat, (it was old 
 Hudgeon, the yotmg men called him " Fanny " now), sat with his 
 shaven chin on the top of his stick and said: 
 
 " Well, it's a big gospel the young man has got to live up to, 
 with all his taU talk about women. But we'll see ! We'll see ! " 
 
 Gell, who was wildly excited by his friend's success, was walkr 
 ing to and fro on the platform waiting for Stowell's arrival. 
 When he came (he was the last to come) he had a graver look on 
 his face than Gell had ever seen there before, except once, and he 
 seemed to be painf uUy preoccupied'. 
 
 " Ah, is it you ? " he had said, when G«I1 laid hold of him — he 
 had started as if he had seen a ghost. 
 
 They got into the train together and had a carriage to them- 
 selves. Gell began with his congratulations, but Stowell brushed 
 them aside, and said: 
 
 " What happened with your father? " 
 
 Gell told his story as he had told it at Derby Haven — ^that the 
 Speaker had cut up badly and turned him out of the house. 
 
 " But what do I care? Not a ha'porth! Best thing that ever 
 happened to me, perhaps." 
 
 "And Bessie?" 
 
 " Oh, Bessie? Well, that's all right now. A bit troubled 
 
166 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 at first about my being cut off by the family and losing my income. 
 Just like a woman ! So unselfish ! " 
 
 There was silence for some time after that save for the rumble 
 of the carriage wheels. Then GeU said he was sorry he had told 
 Bessie about the loss of the income. She would always be think- 
 ing he would regret the sacrifice he had made for her. If he 
 could only find some way of showing her it didn't matter, because 
 he could always get plenty of money .... 
 
 " And why can't you ? " said Stowell. 
 
 " How? " 
 
 " It's two pounds a week you draw on me for Miss Brown, 
 isn't it? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then I'U make it ten on condition that you don't pay me back 
 a penny until I ask for it." 
 
 " What a good chap . . . . " But Gell could get no farther 
 — ^his eyes were full and his throat was hurting him. 
 
 On arriving at Douglas he saw Stowell across the platform to 
 the northern train, and just as it was about to start, he said: 
 
 " By the way, old man, you don't mind my saying something? " 
 
 "Not a bit! What is it?" 
 
 " You've hanged that poor devil of a Peel fisherman, and I 
 suppose he deserved it. But I caught a glimpse of him as he was 
 going down to the cells, and I thought he looked a fine fellow." 
 
 " He is a line fellow." 
 
 " Do you say that? He made a big mistake in killing the 
 wife, though, didn't he? If I had been in his place do you know 
 what 7 should have done ? " 
 
 " What? " 
 
 " Killed the other man.'' 
 
 Stowell drew back in his seat and at I3ie next moment the 
 train started. 
 
 As it ran into the country a black thought, a vague shadow of 
 something, was swirling like a bat in the darkness of Stowell's 
 brain. "That was not the first time it had come to him. It had 
 come to him in Court, while he was speaking, startling hini, stifling 
 him, almost compelling him to sit down. 
 
 " But Bessie's case was different," he thought. " She was not 
 deserted. She sent Alick to me herself. Therefore it's impos- 
 sible, quite impossible." 
 
 Nevertheless, he slept badly that night, and as often as he 
 awoke he had the sense of a red glow in his bedroom and of being 
 blinded by the fierce glare from a burning boat. 
 
THE GREAT WINTER 167 
 
 CHAPTEE EIGHTEEN 
 
 THE GREAT WINTER 
 
 " Come in, my boy. Sit down. Take a cigarette. I have im- 
 portant news for you." 
 
 The Governor had returned from London and was calling 
 Stowell into his smoking-room. 
 
 " First, about that recommendation to mercy. It has gone 
 through. The death sentence has been commuted to ten years' 
 imprisonment." 
 
 " I am glad, Sir — very glad." 
 
 " Next, your speech, deputizing for the Attorney, was reported 
 — part of it — in the London newspapers and made a good 
 impression." 
 
 " I'm very proud. Sir." 
 
 " I dined with the Home Secretary the following night, and the 
 Lord Chief Justice, who was among the guests, was warm in his 
 approval. Acid old fellow with noisy false teeth, but quite 
 enthusiastic about your defence of law and order. Crime was 
 contagious like disease, and there was an epidemic of violence in 
 the world now. If society was to be saved from anarchy then law 
 alone could save it. Some of their English courts — ^judges as well 
 as juries — had been criminally indulgent to crimes of passion. 
 Our little Manx court had shown them a good example." 
 
 " That is very encouraging. Sir." 
 
 " Very ! And now the last thing I have to tell you is that 
 Tynwald Court this morning voted a sum for a memorial to your 
 father, leaving the form of it to me. I've decided on a portrait 
 by Mylechreest, your Manx artist, to be hung in the Court-house 
 at Castle Rushen. Mylechreest knew the Deemster (saw him at 
 his last Court, in fact) and thinks he can paint the portrait from 
 memory. But if you have any photographs let him have them 
 without delay. And now oif you go ! Somebody's waiting for you 
 in the drawing-room." 
 
 During the next six months Stowell worked as he had never 
 worked before. Four hours a day at his office or in the Courts, and 
 uncounted hours at home. Janet used to say she could never 
 look out of her bedroom window at night without seeing his light 
 from the library on the lawn. 
 
 Nevertheless he was at Government House every day, and 
 Fenella and he had their cheerful hours together. 
 
 Winter came on. It was such a winter as nobody in the island 
 could remember to have seen before. First wind that lashed the 
 sea into loud cries about the coast, blew over the Cnrraghs with a 
 
168 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 perpetual wailing, ran up the glen with a roar, and brought the 
 " boys " out of their beds to hold the roofs on their houses 
 by throwing ropes over the thatch and fastening them down 
 with stones. 
 
 Then rain that deluged the low-lying lands, so that women 
 had to go to market in boats; and then mist that hid the island 
 for a week and brought more ships ashore than anybody had seen 
 since the days of the ten black brothers of Jurby who (long sus- 
 pected of wrecking) were caught stuffing the box tombs in the 
 churchyard with rolls of Irish cloth. 
 
 But neither wind, nor rain, nor mist, kept Stowell from Fenella. 
 
 Clad in boots up to his thighs, with an oilskin coat tightly 
 belted about the waist and a sou'wester strapped down from crown 
 to chin, he would cross the mountains on his young chestnut mare, 
 with the island roaring about him like a living thing, and arrive 
 at Fenella's door with his horse's flanks steaming and his own 
 face ablaze. 
 
 After the wind and the rain came a long frost, which laid its 
 unseen hand on the rivers and waterfalls, making a deep hush that 
 was like a great peace after a great war. In the middle of the 
 island (the valley of Baldwin) there was a tarn into which the 
 mountains drained, and as soon as this was frozen over Stowell 
 and Fenella skated on it. 
 
 What a delight! The ice humming under their feet like a 
 muiBed drum; the air ringing to their voices like a cup; the sun 
 sparkling in the hoar frost on the bare boughs of the trees; the 
 blue sky sailing over the hilltops, capped with white clouds that 
 looked like soft lamb's wool. 
 
 God, how good it was to be alive ! 
 
 Then came a great snow that brought a still deeper silence, 
 broken at Ballamoar only by the skid of the steel runners of the 
 stiff carts, whose wheels had been removed, and the smothered 
 calling of the cattle which had been shut up in the houses. 
 
 But what rapture ! Every morning the farmers looked out of 
 their windows, thick with ice, to see if the snow had gone, but as 
 Stowell drew his blind and the snow light of the winter's sun came 
 pouring in upon him, he thought only of another joyous day 
 with Fenella. 
 
 Then up to Injebreck in white sweaters and woollen helinets 
 to fly down the long slopes on ski, with all the world around them 
 robed and veiled like a bride. 
 
 There was a broad ridge on the top, a great divide, separating 
 the north of the island from the south, and as they skimmed across 
 it from sight of eastern to sight of western sea, it was just as if 
 
THE QBE AT WINTER 169 
 
 they were sailing through the sky with the white round hills for 
 clouds and the earth lying somewhere far below. 
 
 They were doing this one day when Stowell came upon a place 
 where the snow was honeycombed with holes. 
 
 " Helloa ! There's something here ! " he cried. 
 
 Digging into the snow he found a buried sheep, still alive but 
 unable to stand. So, taking it by its front and back legs he swung 
 it over his head on to his shoulders and carried it to a shepherd's 
 hut a mile away, where a turf fire was burning, and dogs, with 
 snow on their snouts, were barking about a pen of bleating sheep 
 that had been similarly recovered. 
 
 His delight at this rescue was so boisterous that he went back 
 and back for hours and brought in other and other sheep. 
 
 Fenella, who followed him with his ski staffs, was in raptures. 
 This was a new side of Victor Stowell, and she had a woman's 
 joy in it. He was not only clever, he was strong. He could not 
 only make speeches (as nobody else in the world could), he could 
 ride and skate and ski, and (if he liked) he could lift a woman 
 in his arms and throw her over his shoulder. Something would 
 come of this some day — she was sure it would. 
 
 They were at the top of the pass, stamping the snow off their 
 ski, and shaking it out of their gloves, before going down to the 
 Governor's carriage which (also on runners) was waiting for them 
 at the inn at the bottom of the hill. The sun was setting and the 
 red light of it was flushing Fenella's face. She looked sideways 
 at Stowell with a mischievous light in her eyes and said, 
 
 " Now I know what you are. Sir." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " You are not a lawyer, really." 
 
 "No?" 
 
 " You're an old Viking, born a thous'and years after your time." 
 
 " You don't say." 
 
 " Yes," she said, making ready for flight, " one of those sea 
 robbers you told me of, who came to take posession of the island 
 and capture its women." 
 
 "Really?" 
 
 " I dare say you're sorry you're not back with your ridiculous 
 old ancestors, catching a woman for your wife." 
 
 " Not a bit! I've caught one aready." 
 
 " Eh? What? If you mean .... Don't be too sure. Sir! 
 You've not caught me yet ! " 
 
 " Haven't I ? Look out then — I'm going to catch you now." 
 
 " Catch me ! " she cried, and away she flew down the slopes, 
 laughing, screaming, rocking, reeling, and leaping over the drifts. 
 
170 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 until at length she tumbled into a deep one, with head down and 
 ski in air, and came up half blind, with StoweU's arms about her 
 and his lips kissing the snow olF her chin and nose. 
 
 What a winter ! Ck)uld there be any sorrow or sin or crime in 
 the world at all ? And what did it want its prisons and courts for ? 
 
 But the thaw came at length, and then the noises of the garru- 
 lous old island began again with the rattle of the cart wheels, the 
 rumble of the rivers running to the sea, and the mooing and bleat- 
 ing of the liberated cattle and sheep, coming out of their Ark and 
 going back to the discoloured grass of the fields. 
 
 Stowell and Fenella felt as if they were descending to a world 
 of reality from a world of dreams. 
 
 " Good-night! " 
 
 They were in the porch at Government House after the last of 
 their w^inter expeditions. He was crushing her in his arms again, 
 to the ruin of her beautiful hair, and whispering of the time that 
 was coming when there would be no need for such partings. 
 
 " Three months yet. Sir ! " 
 
 " Heavens, what an age! " 
 
 And then home to Ballamoar, with his young chestnut under 
 him sniffing the night air, and over his head a paradise of stars. 
 
 II 
 
 " Come immediately. Important news for you." 
 
 It was a telegram from the Governor, who had been in London 
 again. Stowell went up to Douglas by the first train. 
 
 " It's about the Deemstership." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " Old Taubman, as you know, has been complaining of over- 
 work ever since your father died. The winter had crippled him 
 and he is down with rheumatism. Fortnightly courts being post- 
 poned, cases in arrears — ^it was necessary to do something. So I 
 went up to Whitehall last week and told them a successor would 
 have to be appointed. They asked me to recommend a name and 
 I recommended yours." 
 
 "Mine, Sir?" 
 
 " Yours ! It was all right, too, until I had to tell them your 
 age, and then — phew ! A judge and not yet thirty ! I stood to my 
 ground, said this was the age of youth, quoted the classical exam- 
 ples. Anyhow, there was my recommendation — take it or leave it." 
 
 " And what was the result. Sir ? " 
 
 " The result was that the Lord Chief was consulted, and then 
 our insignificance saved us. Yes, there was precedent enough for 
 
THE QBEAT WINTER 171 
 
 young judges in colonies and dependencies. And this being a case 
 of a worthy son succeeding a worthy father .... and' so on and 
 so forth." 
 
 " WeU.? " 
 
 " Well, the end of it is that you are to go up to see the Home 
 Secretary after the House has risen at Easter." 
 
 Stowell's heart was beating high, yet he hardly knew whether 
 he was more proud than afraid. He mumbled something about 
 the claims of his seniors at the bar. 
 
 " Oh yes, I know ! All the old stick-in-the-muds ! But keep 
 your end up in London and I'll keep mine up here." 
 
 " You are very good. Sir. You have always been good to me." 
 
 The Governor, who had been rattling on, in a rush of high 
 spirits, suddenly became grave and spoke slowly. 
 
 " Not at all," he said. " And I'm not thinking of you as ... . 
 what you are going to be. I'm thinking of you as your father's 
 son, and expecting you to live up io your traditions. We want the 
 spirit of the great Deemster in the island these days. Violence ! 
 Violence ! Violence ! I agree with the Lord Ohief . It seems as if 
 the world is getting out of hand. Justice is the only thing that 
 can save it from anarchy — utter anarchy and ruin. Let's have 
 no more reconmiendations to mercy! When people commit crime 
 let them suffer. When they take life — no matter who or what they 
 are — ^let them die for it." 
 
 " And by the way " (StoweU was leaving the room), " your 
 father's portrait is finished. We must unveil it before you go up 
 to London." 
 
 Trembling all over, Stowell went into the library to tell Fenella:. 
 
 " How splendid ! " she said. She was glowing with excite- 
 ment. " You've done magnificent work for women as an advocate, 
 but only think what you will be able to do as a judgfe! There 
 isn't a poor, wronged girl in the island who won't know that she 
 has a friend on the Bench! " 
 
 END OF SECOND BOOK 
 
THIRD BOOK 
 THE CONSEQUENCE 
 
 CHAPTER NINETEEN 
 
 THE EVE OF MARY 
 
 Bessie Collister had passed through a very different winter. 
 
 When she read in the insular newspaper the long report of the 
 trial of the Peel fisherman she was terrified. Men did not forgive 
 their wives, then, in such cases? On the contrary the more they 
 loved them the less they forgave them. 
 
 GeU came bounding into the sitting-room while she had the 
 newspaper in her hand and before she had time to hide it away 
 he saw what she had been reading. 
 
 " Terrible, isn't it? " he said. " Poor devil, I was sorry for 
 him. When a woman deceives a man like that the law ought to 
 allow him to put her away. He did wrong, of course, but he had 
 no legal remedy — not an atom. Old Vic made out a magnificent 
 case for the woman, but she deserved all she got, I'm afraid." 
 
 Bessie gave a frightened cry, and then GeU said, as if to 
 conciliate her. 
 
 " I'll tell you what, though. If the woman was guilty there 
 was somebody else who was ten times guiltier, and that was the 
 other man. The scoundrel ! The treacherous, deceitful scoundrel, 
 skulking away in the dark ! I should like to choke the life out of 
 him. That's what I said to Stowell going up in the train. ' If I 
 had been in the husband's place do you Ittiow what I should have 
 done? ' I said. ' I should have killed the other man.' " 
 
 Bessie's terror increased ten-fold. Dread of what Gell might 
 do sat on her like a nightmare. To marry him seemed to be 
 impossible, yet not to marry him, now that she loved him so 
 much, seemed to be impossible also. 
 
 A secret hope came to her. It was early days yet. Perhaps 
 something would happen to her bye-and-bye, which, being over 
 and done with, would leave her free to marry Alick with a clean 
 heart and conscience. 
 
 To help it to come to pass, she stayed indoors, took no exer- 
 cise, and ate as little as possible. Her health declined, and her 
 face in the glass began to look peaky. She took a fierce joy in 
 172 
 
THE EVE OF MARY 173 
 
 these signs of increasing weakness. The Miss Browns kept a few 
 chickens in their back garden, and' one morning, after the snow 
 had begun to fall, they found Bessie in bare feet going out to 
 feed them. 
 
 " Bessie, what are you doing? " they cried. 
 
 " It's nothing," she said. " I'm used of it, you know. I was 
 eight years old before I wore shoe or stocking." 
 
 Meantime she was putting Gell off and off. " Time enough 
 yet, boy," she would say as often as he asked her. 
 
 " She's thinking of me again," thought Gell, and he began on 
 a long series of fictions to account for his new-found prosperity. 
 He was getting along wonderfully in his profession, and was 
 better off now than he had been before he lost his allowance. But 
 still it was " Bye-and-bye ! Time enough yet, boy ! " 
 
 One day Gell came with an almost irresistible story. He had 
 bespoken a house in Athol. Street. It was just what they wanted. 
 Close to the Law Library and nearly opposite the new Court 
 House. Two rooms on the ground floor for his ofiSces, two on 
 the first floor for their living apartments, and two on the top for 
 the kitchen and for the maid. 
 
 It is the temptation that no woman can resist — the desire to 
 have a home that shall be all her own — and for a few weeks Bessie 
 fell to it. Evening after evening, she and Alick sat side by side 
 in the sitting-room making catalogues of all they would require 
 to set up a household. Gell took charge of the tables and chairs 
 and side-boards. Bessie was the authority on the blankets and 
 linen. It was such a delight to construct a home from memory! 
 And then what laughs and thrills and shamefaced looks when, in 
 spite of all their thinking, they remembered some intimate and 
 essential thing which they had hitherto forgotten. 
 
 *' Sakes alive, boy, you've forgotten the bedstead." 
 
 " Lord, so I have. We shall want a bedstead, shan't we .? " 
 
 But even this fierce gambling with her fate broke down at last 
 with Bessie. The certainty had fallen on her. The natural 
 strength of her constitution had withstood all the attacks she had 
 made upon it. Whether she married Gell, or did not marry him, 
 there was nothing before her except suffering and disgrace. How 
 could she keep his love against the shame that was striding down 
 on her? 
 
 Christmas had come. It was Christmas Eve. The Manx 
 people call it Oie'l Verry (the Eve of Mary), and during the last 
 hour before midnight they take possession of their parish churches, 
 over the heads of their clergy, for the singing of their ancient 
 Manx carvals (carols). The old Miss Browns were to keep Oie'l 
 
174 TBE MASTER OF MAS 
 
 Verry at their church in Castletown. They had always done so, 
 and this time Bessie was to go with them. 
 
 It was a clear cold winter's night with crisp snow underfoot, 
 and overhead a world of piercing stars. 
 
 As the two old maids in their long black boas, and Bessie in a 
 fur-lined coat which Gell had sent as a Christmas present, crossed 
 the foot-bridge over the harbour and walked under the blind walls 
 of the dark castle, the great clock in the square tower was striking 
 eleven. But it was bright enough in the market place, with the 
 light from the church windows on the white ground, and people 
 hurrying to church at a quick trot and stamping the snow off their 
 boots at the door. 
 
 It was brighter still inside, for the altar and' pulpit had been 
 decorated with ivy and holly, and, though the church was lit by 
 gas, most of the worshippers, according to ancient custom, had 
 brought candles also. 
 
 The church was very full, but the old Miss Browns, with Bessie 
 behind them, walked up the aisle to the pew under the reading- 
 desk which they had always rented. The congregation about them 
 was a strangely mixed one, and the atmosphere was half solemn 
 and half hilarious. 
 
 The gallery was occupied by farm lads and fisher-lads chiefly, 
 and they were craning their necks to catch glimpses of the girls 
 in the pews below, while the girls themselves (as often as they 
 could do so without being observed by their elders) were glancing 
 up with gleaming eyes. In the body of the church there were 
 middle-aged folks with soberer faces, and in the front seats sat 
 old people, with slower and duller eyes and cheeks scored deep 
 with wrinkles — the mysterious hieroglyphics of life's troubled 
 story, sickness and death, husband's lost at half-tide and children 
 gone before them. 
 
 An opening hymn had just been sung, the last notes of the 
 organ were dying down, the clergyman, in his surplice, was sitting 
 by the side of the altar, and the first of the carol singers had risen 
 in his pew, candle in hand, to sing his carval. 
 
 He was a rugged old man from the mountains of Rushen, half 
 landsman and half seaman, and his carol (which he sang in the 
 Manx, while the tallow guttered down on his discoloured fingers) 
 was a catalogue of all the bad women mentioned in the Bible, from 
 Eve, the mother of mankind, who brought evil into the world, to 
 " that graceless wench, Salome." 
 
 After that came similar carols, sung by similar carol-singers 
 said received by the boys in the gallery with gusts of laughter 
 which the Clerk tried in vain to suppress. But at last there came 
 
TEE EVE OF MARY 175 
 
 a carval sung in chorus by twelve young girls with sweet young 
 voices and faces that were chaste and pure and full of joy — all 
 carrying their candles as they walked slowly up the aisle from the 
 western end of the church to the altar steps. 
 
 Their carol was an account of the Nativity, scarcely leas crude 
 than the carols that had gone before it, though the singers seemed 
 to know nothing of that — ^how Joseph, being a just man, had 
 espoused a virgin, and finding she was with child before he mar- 
 ried her, he had wished to put her away, but the angel of the Lord 
 had appeared to him and told him not to, and how at last he had 
 carried his wife and child away into the land of Egypt, out of 
 reach of the wrath of Herod the King, who was trying to disgrace 
 and destroy them. 
 
 A little before midnight the clergyman rose and asked for 
 silence. And then, while all heads were bowed and there was a 
 solemn hush within, the great clock of the Castle struck twelve in 
 the darkness outside. After that the organ pealed out " Hark^ the 
 herald angels sing," and everybody who had a candle extinguished 
 it, and all stood up and sang. 
 
 The bells were ringing joyfully as the congregation trooped 
 out of the church, but for some while longer they moved about on 
 the crinkling snow in front of it, saluting and shaking hands, 
 everybody with everybody. 
 
 " A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to j&a." 
 
 " Same to you, and many of them." 
 
 They saluted and shook hands with Bessie also. 
 
 Then the Verger put out the lights in the church behind them, 
 and in the sudden darkness the crowd broke up, one more Oie'l 
 Verry over, and under the slow descent of the starlight the cheerful 
 voices and crinkling footsteps went their various ways home. 
 
 Back at Derby Haven, Bessie, who had been on the point of 
 crying during the latter part of the service, ran up to her room, 
 flung herself face down on her bed and burst into a flood of tears. 
 
 If she, too, could only fly away, and stay away, until her 
 trouble was over ! But how could sihe do that? And where could 
 she go to? 
 
 II 
 
 Two months passed. Bessie's time was fast approaching, and 
 the nearer it came the more she was terrified by the signs of it. 
 The symptoms of coming maternity whicli. are a joy and a pride to 
 married mothers were a dread and a terror to her. Had' she 
 brought herself so low that she could not live through the time that 
 was before her ? At one moment she thought of going to Fenella. 
 
176 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Everybody said how good Miss Stanley was to girls in trouble. 
 But when she remembered Fenella's relation to Stowell, and 
 Stowell's to Gell, and her own to all three, she told herself that 
 Fenella Stanley was the one woman in the world whom she must 
 never come face to face with. 
 
 At length, thinking death was certain, she saw only one thing 
 left to do — to go back to her mother. It was not thus that she 
 had expected to return, but nothing else was possible now. In 
 her helplessness and ignorance, having no one to reassure her, the 
 high-spirited girl became a child again. Twenty years of her life 
 slipped back at a stride, and she felt as she used to do when she 
 ran bare-foot on the roads and fell and bruised her knees, or tore 
 her little hairy legs in the gorse and then went home to lie on her 
 mother's lap and be rocked before the fire and comforted. 
 
 But going home had its terrors also. There was Dan Bal- 
 dromma! What could she do? Was there no way out for her? 
 
 One day the elder of the Miss Browns (she gave music les- 
 sons to old pupils at their own homes) came back from Castletown 
 with a " shocking story." It was about a witch-doctor at Creg- 
 naish — a remote village at the southernmost extremity of the 
 island, where the inhabitants were supposed to be descended from 
 a crew of Spanish sailors who had been wrecked on the rocky 
 coast below. 
 
 The witch-doctor was a woman, seventy years of age, and 
 commonly called Nan. Hitherto she had lived by curing ring- 
 worms on children and blood-letting in strong men by means of 
 charms that were half in Latin and half in Manx. But now young 
 wives were going to her to be cured of barrenness, or for mixtures 
 to make their husbands love them ; and worst of all, the young girls 
 from all parts of the island were flocking to her to be told their 
 fortunes — whether their boys at the mackerel fishing were true to 
 them, or going astray with the Irish girls of Kinsale and Cork. 
 
 " It's shocking, this witchcraft," said old Miss Brown. " In 
 my young days it was given for law that the women who practised 
 such arts should stand in a white sheet on a platform in the market- 
 place with the words For Charming and Sorcery in capital letters 
 on their breasts." 
 
 Bessie said nothing, but next day, after breakfast, making 
 excuse of her need of a walk, she hurried out, took train to Port 
 Erin, and climbed, with many pauses, the zigzag path up the 
 Mull Hills to where a Druids' circle sits on the brow, and Cregnaish 
 (like a gipsy encampment of mud huts thatched with straw) 
 sprawls over the breast of them. , 
 
 It was a fine spring morning, with the sea lying still on either 
 
TEE EVE OF MARY 177 
 
 side of the uplands, and the sun^ through clouds of broken crimson, 
 peering over the shoulder of the Calf like a blood-shot eye. 
 
 Bessie' had no need to ask her way to the witch-doctor's house, 
 for troops of young girls were coining down from it, generally in 
 pairs, whispering and laughing merrily. At length she came upon 
 it — a one-storey thatched cottage with a queue of girls outside. 
 
 When the last of the girls had gone, and Bessie still stood 
 waiting on the opposite side of the rutted space which served for a 
 road, a wisp of a woman, with hair and eyebrows as black as a 
 shoe, but a face as wrinkled as the trunk of the trammon tree, came 
 to the door and said, 
 
 " Come in, my fine young woman. There's nothing to be 
 freckened of." 
 
 It was Nan, the witch-doctor, and Bessie followed her into 
 the house. 
 
 The inside was a single room with a fire at one end and a bed 
 at the other. The floor was of hardened clay and the scraas of 
 the roof were so low overhead that a tall man could scarcely have 
 stood erect under them. Bundles of herbs hung from nails in the 
 sooty rafters and when the old woman closed the door, Bessie 
 saw that the Crash cuirn (the cross of mountain ash) was standing 
 at the back of it. 
 
 " I'm in trouble, ma'am," said Bessie, who was on the verge 
 of tears, " and I'm wanting to know what to do and what is to 
 happen to me." 
 
 The witch-doctor, whose quick eyes had taken in the situation 
 at a glance, said, 
 
 " Aw yes, bogh, trouble enough. But knock that cat off the 
 cheer in the choillagh and sit down and make yourself 
 comfortable." 
 
 Bessie loosened her fur-lined cloak and sat in the ingle, with 
 the fire at her feet and a peep of the blue sky coming down on her 
 from the wide chimney. 
 
 " They were telling me a fine young woman was coming," said 
 the witch-doctor (she meant the invisible powers), " and it was 
 wondering and wondering I was would she have strength to climb 
 the brews. But here you are, my chree, and now a cup o' tay 
 will do no harm at all." 
 
 Bessie tried to refuse, but the old woman said, 
 
 " Chut ! A cup o' tay is nothing and here's my tajrpot on 
 the warm turf and the tay at the best, too." 
 
 While Bessie sipped at her cup the witch-doctor went on talk- 
 ing, but she took quick glances at the girl from time to time and 
 sometimes asked a question. 
 12 
 
178 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 At length she bolted the door, drew a thick blind over the 
 window, knelt before the hearth, and called on Bessie to do the 
 same, so that they were kneeling side by side, with no light in the 
 darkened room except the red glow f om the fire on their faces and 
 the blue streak from the sky behind the smoke from the chimney. 
 
 After that the witch-doctor mumbled some rhymes about St. 
 Patrick and the blessed St. Bridget, then put her ear to the 
 ground^ saying she was listening to the Sheean ny Feaynid, the 
 invisible beings who were always wandering over the world. And 
 then she began on the fortune, which Bessie, who was trembling, 
 interrupted with involuntary cries. 
 
 " There's a fair young man in your life, my chree {Yes) and 
 if you're not his equal you're the apple of his eye. There's a poor 
 ould woman, too, and she praying and praying for her bogh-millish 
 to come home to her {Oh!) and the longing that's taking the 
 woman at times is pitiful to see. ' Where is my wandering girl 
 to-night, ' she's singing when she's sitting by her fireside ; and 
 when she's going to bed she's saying, ' In Jesu's keeping nought 
 can harm my erring child.' " 
 
 At this Bessie broke down utterly, and the witch-doctor had to 
 stop for a moment. Then she began again in a difi^erent strain, 
 
 " There's an ould man too .... yes .... no ... . {Yes, 
 yes!) as imperent as sin and as bould as a white stone, and with a 
 vice at him as loud as a trambone. Aw, yes, woman-bogh, yes, 
 there's trouble coming on you, but take heart, gel, for things will 
 come out right before long and it's a proud woman you're going to 
 be some day. But you must go home to the mother, my chree, and 
 never take rest till you're laying your head under the same roof 
 with her." 
 
 " And will the young man be true to me whatever happens ? " 
 
 " True as true, my chree, and his heart that warm to you at last 
 that it will be like gorse and ling burning on the mountains." 
 
 " And will the old man be able to do him any injury? " 
 
 " Lough bless me, no ! Neither to him nor you, gel. Roaring 
 and tearing and mad as a wasp, maybe, but nothing to do no 
 harm at all." 
 
 Bessie had crossed the old woman's palm with sixpence as she 
 came into the house, but she emptied her purse into it going out 
 and then went down the hill with a light step and a lighter heart. 
 
 AUck GeU was at Derby Haven when she got back, having 
 been waiting for more than an hour. Seeing her coming down the 
 road with her face aglow, he dashed off to meet her, and broke into 
 a flood of joyous words. 
 
 " Helloa ! Here you are at last ! Looking as fresh as a 
 
THE BVE OF MARY 179 
 
 flower, too ? What did I say ? Didn't I tell you that you had only 
 to get about and take exercise and you would be as right as rain in 
 no time? But, look here, Bess " (he had drawn her arm through 
 his), " you've kept me waiting all winter and now that you're get- 
 ting better I'm going to stand no more nonsense." 
 
 Bessie was laughing. 
 
 " I'm not ! Upon my soul, I'm not ! You wouldn't let me put 
 up the banns at Malew, thinking Dan Baldromma would hear of 
 them through Caesar Qualtrough, and come here making a noise 
 at Miss Brown's, though he has no more right over you than the 
 Coroner, and no more power over me than a tomtit. But there are 
 other ways of marrying besides being called in church, and one of 
 them is by Bishop's licence." 
 
 " Bishop's licence.'' " 
 
 " Certainly! You just go up to the Registrar's in Douglas, 
 sign your names in a book, pay a few pounds, get the Bishop's 
 certificate, and then you can be married wherever you like and as 
 quietly as you please. And that's what we're going to do now." 
 
 " Now-f" You mean to-day.^ " 
 
 " Well, no, not to-day. I have to go to the Castle this after- 
 noon. They're unveiling a portrait of the old Deemster. And 
 what do you think, Bess ? " 
 
 " What? " 
 
 " There's a whisper that Stowell is to be made Deemster in 
 succession to his father. Glorious, isn't it? Splendid chap! 
 Straight as a die ! Rather young, certainly, but there's not one of 
 the old gang fit to hold a candle to him. He's to go up to London 
 to-morrow, so I want to see the last of him. But I'll be down 
 by the first train after the boat sails in the morning, and then 
 we'U go back to Douglas together." 
 
 They had reached the gate of the old maid's house by this time 
 and Gell was looking at his watch. 
 
 " Pshew ! I must be off ! Ceremony begins at three and it's 
 that already. Wouldn't miss it for worlds. By-bye! . . . An- 
 other one! .... Oh, but you must, though." 
 
 Bessie looked after him as he hurried down the road, swinging 
 his arms and pitching his shoulders, as he always did when his 
 heart was glad. Then she went indoors, ran upstairs and set 
 herself to think things out. 
 
 She must ^o before Alick could get back. When he arrived 
 to-morrow she must be on her way to her mother's. It was earlier 
 than she had intended, but there was no help for that now. And 
 then it would be all right in the end — ^the Sheean ny Feaynid (the 
 Voices of Infinity) had said so. 
 
180 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 After her child had been born her mother would take it and 
 bring it up as her own — she had heard of such things happening 
 in Manx houses, hadn't she? And when all was over and every- 
 thing was covered up, she would come back, and then .... then 
 Alick and she would be married. 
 
 In the light of what the witch-doctor had said it seemed to her 
 so natural, so simple, so sure. But later in the evening, it tore her 
 heart woefully to think of Alick coming from Douglas on the 
 following day and finding her gone. So she wrote this note and 
 stole out and posted it : 
 
 " Don't come to-morrow. I'll be writing again in the 
 morning, telling you the reason why." 
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY 
 
 VICTOR STOWELl's VOW 
 
 The old Court-house at Castle Rushen was full to overflowing. 
 Nearly all the great people of the island were there — ^the Legis- 
 lative Council, the Keys, the leaders of the Bar, the more promi- 
 nent members of the clergy, the long line of insular oflicials, with 
 their wives and daughters. 
 
 A pale shaft of spring sunshine from the lantern light was on 
 the new portrait of the Deemster, which had been hung on the 
 eastern wall and was still covered by a white sheet. 
 
 The time of waiting for the proceedings to begin was passed in 
 a low buzz of conversation, chiefly on one subject. " Is it true 
 that he is to follow his father? " " So they say." " So young 
 and with so many before him — I call it shocking." " So do I, 
 but then he's the son of the old Deemster, and is to marry the 
 daughter of the Governor." 
 
 At the last moment Stowell and Fenella arrived and were shown 
 into seats reserved for them at the end of the Jury-box. Then the 
 conversation (among the women at least) took another turn. 
 " Well, they're a lovely pair — I will say that for them." 
 
 The Governor, accompanied by the Bishop and the Attorney- 
 General, stepped on to the crimson-covered dais, and the pro- 
 ceedings commenced. 
 
 The Governor's own speech was a short one. They had gath- 
 ered to do honour to the memory of one of the most honoured of 
 their countrymen. The memory of its great men was a nation's 
 greatest inheritance. If that was true of the larger communities 
 it was no less true of the little realm of Man. 
 
 " Hence the island," said the Governor, " is doing a service to 
 
VICTOR STOWELL'S VOW 181 
 
 itself in setting up in this Court-house, the scene of his principal 
 activities, the memorial to its great Deemster which I have now 
 the honour to unveil." 
 
 When the Governor pulled a cord and the white sheet fell from 
 the face of the picture there was a gasp of astonishment. The 
 impression of reality was startling. The Deemster had been 
 painted in wig and gown and as if sitting on the bench in that very 
 Court-house. The powerful yet melancholy eyes, the drawn yet 
 firm-set mouth, the suggestion of suifering yet strength — it was 
 just as he had been seen there last, summing up after the trial 
 of the woman who had killed her husband. 
 
 As soon as the spectators, who had risen, had resumed their 
 seats, the Governor called on the Attorney-General. 
 
 The old man was deeply moved. The Deemster had been his 
 oldest and dearest friend. It was difficult for him to remember a 
 time when they had not been friends and impossible to recall an 
 hour in which their friendship had been darkened by so much as a 
 cloud. If it was true that the memory of its great men was a 
 nation's greatest inheritage, the island had a great heritage in the 
 memory of Deemster Stowell. He had been great as a lawyer, 
 great as a judge, great as a gentleman, as a friend, as a lover, as a 
 husband, and (with a glance in the direction of the jury-box) 
 as a father also. 
 
 " I pray and believe," said the Attorney, " that this memorial 
 to our great Deemster may be a stimulus and an inspiration to aU 
 our young men whatsoever, particularly to such as are in the 
 profession of the Bar, and especially to one who bears his name, 
 has inherited many of his splendid talents, and may yet be called, 
 please God, to fill his place and follow in his footsteps." 
 
 When the old man sat down there was general applause, a 
 little damped, perhaps, by the last of his references, and then 
 followed the event of the afternoon. 
 
 By the blind instinct that animates a crow^d, all eyes turned in 
 the direction of Victor Stowell. He sat by Fenella's side, breath- 
 ing audibly with head down and hands clasped tightly about one 
 of his knees. 
 
 There was a pause and then a low stamping of feet and 
 Fenella whispered, 
 
 " They want you to speak, dear." 
 
 But Stowell did not seem to hear, and at length the Governor 
 called on him by name. 
 
 When he rose he looked pale and much older, and bore a 
 resemblance to the picture of his father on the opposite wall which 
 few had observed before. 
 
182 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 He began in a low tense voice, thanking His Excellency for 
 asking him to speak, but saying he would have given a great deal 
 not to do so. 
 
 "' The only excuse I can have for standing here to-day," he 
 said, " is that I may thank you. Sir, and this company, and my 
 countrymen and countrywomen generally, in the name of one 
 whose voice, so often heard within these walls, must now be silent." 
 
 After that he paused, as if not quite sure that he ought to go 
 further, and then continued, 
 
 " If my father was a great Judge, it was chiefly because he 
 was a great lover of Justice. Justice was the most sacred thing 
 on earth to him, and no man ever held higher the dignity and duty 
 of a Judge. Woe to the Judge who permitted personal motives 
 to pervert his judgment, and thrice woe to him who committed a 
 crime against justice. Therefore, if I know my father's heart 
 and have any right to speak for him, I will say that what you 
 have done this afternoon is not so much to perpetuate the memory 
 of Douglas Stowell, Deemster of Man, as to set up in this old 
 Court-house, which has witnessed so many tragic scenes, an altar 
 to the spirit of Justice, so that no Judge, following him in his 
 place, may ever forget that his first and last and only duty is to be 
 just and fear not." 
 
 He paused again and seemed to be about to stop, but, in a voice 
 so low as to be scarcely audible, he said, 
 
 " As for myself I hardly dare to speak at all. What my dear 
 master has said of me makes it difficult to say anything. Some 
 people seem to think it is a great advantage to a young man to be 
 the son of a great father. But if it is a great help it is also a 
 great responsibility and may sometimes be the source of a great 
 sorrow. I never knew what my father had been to me until I 
 lost him. I had always been proud of him, but I had rarely or 
 never given him reason to be proud of me. That is a fault I 
 cannot repair now. But there is one thing I can do and one thing 
 only. I can take my soleron vow — and here and now I do so — 
 that whatever the capacity in which my duty calls me to this place, 
 I will never wilfully do anything in the future, with my father's 
 face on the wall in front of me, that shall be unworthy of my 
 father's son." 
 
 There were husky cheers and some clapping of hands when 
 Stowell sat down, but most of the men were clearing their throats 
 and wiping the mist off their spectacles, and nearly all of the 
 women were coughing and drying their eyes. 
 
 C)thers were to have spoken but the Governor closed up the 
 proceedings quickly, and then there was a general conversazione. 
 
VICTOR BTOWEhVa VOW 183 
 
 The oflScials were talking in groups : — " Wonderful ! The 
 Governor and the old Attorney were grand, but the young man was 
 wonderful ! " " We might go farther and fare worse." " Like 
 his father, you say ? " (it was the Attorney-General) " so like 
 what his father was at his age that sometimes when I look at him I 
 think I'm a young man myself again, and then it's a shock to go 
 home and see an old man's face in the glass." 
 
 A group of old ladies had gathered about Fenella, whose great 
 eyes were ablaze. 
 
 " It was beautiful, my deax, but there was just one other person 
 who ought to have been here to hear it." 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " The old Deemster himself, dear." 
 
 " But he was," said Fenella. 
 
 The Governor drew Stowell aside. " Its all right, my boy ! 
 Must have been instinct, but you touched your people on their 
 tender est place. Pretty hard on you, perhaps, but I knew what 
 I was doing. The opposition in the island is as dead' as a door 
 nail already. Get into the saddle in London and you'll never 
 hear another word about it." 
 
 There were only two dissentients. 
 
 " Aw weU, we'll see, we'll see," said the Speaker — he was 
 going out of the Castle (head down and his big beard on his 
 breast), with old Hudgeon the advocate. 
 
 As he passed through the outer gate his son Alick came run- 
 ning hotfoot up to it. 
 
 It was a cruel moment. 
 
 II 
 
 Victor Stowell left the island for London at nine o'clock next 
 morning. The first bell of the steamer had been rung, the mails 
 were aboarA, and the more tardy of the passengers were hurrying 
 to the gangway, with their porters behind them, when the Gover- 
 nor's carriage drew up and Stowell leapt out of it. 
 
 A large company of the younger advocates (all former members 
 of the " EUan Vannin ") were waiting for him. 
 
 "'Come to see me off? Yes? JoUy good of you," said 
 Stowell, and he stood talking to them at the top of the pier steps 
 till the second bell had been rung. 
 
 Down to that moment nobody had said a word about the object 
 of his journey, although every eye betrayed knowledge of it. But 
 just as he was crossing the gangway to the steamer one of the 
 advocates (a little fat man with the reputation of a wag) cried, 
 with a broad smatch of the Anglo-Manx, 
 
184 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Bring it back in your bres' pockat, boy " — meaning the 
 King's commission for the Deemstership. 
 
 " You go bail," said Stowell, and there was general laughter. 
 
 He was settling himself with his portmanteau in the deck cabin 
 that had been reserved for him when somebody darkened 
 the doorway. 
 
 "Helloa!" 
 
 It was Gell. His cheeks were white, his face looked troubled, 
 and he was breathing rapidly as if he had been running. 
 
 "What's amiss .^ " said Stowell. "Something has happened 
 to you. What is it? " 
 
 Gell stepped into the cabin, and with a suspicion of tears both 
 in his eyes and voice, told his story. 
 
 It was Bessie again. He didn't know what had come over the 
 girl. She had been holding off all winter. First one excuse, 
 then another. 
 
 " I've done all I can think of. Taken a house in Athol Street 
 and furnished it beautifully (thanks to you, old fellow), but it's 
 no use, seemingly." 
 
 " When did you see her last? " 
 
 " Yesterday, and I thought I had settled everything at last. 
 She wouldn't be called in church, so I arranged that I was to go 
 down to Derby Haven this morning, as soon as your boat sailed, 
 and we were to come up to the Registrar's to sign for a Bishop's 
 license. And now, by the first post .... this." 
 
 With a trembling hand Gell took out of his pocket the letter 
 which Bessie had written the night before and handed it to Stowell. 
 
 With a momentary uneasiness Stowell read the letter. 
 
 " Reason? What is it likely to be, think you? " 
 
 " I don't know. I can't say. It's a mystery. I've racked 
 my brains and can only think of one thing now." 
 
 " And what's that? " 
 
 " That she finds out at last that she doesn't care enough for 
 me to marry me." 
 
 " Nonsense, old fellow." 
 
 " What else can it be? There can be nothing else, can there? " 
 
 Stowell's uneasiness increased. " What do you intend to do? " 
 
 " Go down just the same. I've been telegraphing saying I'm 
 coming. That's why I'm late getting down to the boat." 
 
 " And if she persists? " 
 
 " Give her up and clear out, I suppose." 
 
 *' You mean leave the island ? " 
 
 "Why shouldn't I? I've only been a stick-in-the-mud here 
 and couldn't do much worse anywhere else, could I ? Besides " 
 
VICTOR STOWELL'S VOW 186 
 
 (his voice was breaking) " there's my father. You remember 
 what he said. I couldn't face it out if the girl threw me over." 
 
 " She's not well, is she? " 
 
 " Not very." 
 
 " Nothing serious? " 
 
 " No — nothing, the Miss Browns think, that we might not 
 expect after such a change in her life and condition." 
 
 " Then that's it ! Cheer up, old man ! It will all come right 
 yet. Women suffer from so many things that we men know 
 nothing about." 
 
 " If I could only think that . . . . " 
 
 " You may — of course you may." 
 
 " Victor," said Gell, taking Stowell's hand, " will you do one 
 thing more for me ? " 
 
 " Certainly — ^what is it ?" 
 
 " Nobody can read a woman as you can — everybody says that. 
 If Bessie gives me the same answer to-day will you go down to 
 Derby Haven with me when you come back, and find out what's 
 amiss with her ? " 
 
 " Assuredly I will .... that is to say .... if you 
 think . . . . " 
 
 " Is it a promise? " 
 
 *' Undoubtedly. It shall be the first thing I do when I return 
 to the island." 
 
 " All ashore ! All ashore ! " 
 
 A sailor was shouting on the deck outside the cabin door, and 
 the third bell was ringing. 
 
 Gell was the last to cross the gangway. 
 
 " Good-bye and God bless you, and good luck in London ! 
 You deserve every bit of it ! " 
 
 At the next moment the gangway was pulled in, the ropes were 
 thrown aboard, and the steamer was gliding away. 
 
 The young advocates on the pier-head were beginning to make 
 a demonstration. One of them (the wag of course) was singing 
 a sentimental farewell in a doleful voice and the others were join- 
 ing in the chorus : 
 
 " Better lo'ed ye carina he. 
 
 Will ye no come hack again? " 
 
 Some of the other passengers (English commercial travellers 
 apparently) were looking on, so to turn the edge of the joke 
 Stowell sang also, and when his deep baritone was heard above 
 the- rest there was a burst of laughter. 
 
 " Good-bye ! Good-luck ! Bring it back, boy ! " 
 
186 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Gell was standing at the sea-end of the pier, waving his cap 
 and struggling to smile. At sight of his face Stowell felt ashamed 
 of his own happiness. A vague shadow of something that had 
 oome to him before came again, with a shudder such as one feels 
 when a bat strikes one in the dusk. 
 
 At the next moment it was gone. The steamer was swinging 
 round the breakwater and opening the bay, and he was looking for 
 a long white house (Government House) which stood on the heights 
 above the town. He had slept there last night, and this morning 
 Fenella, parting from him in the porch, while the Governor's high- 
 stepping horses were champing on the gravel outside, had promised 
 to signal to him when she saw the steamer clearing the harbour. 
 
 Ah, there she was, waving a white scarf from an upper window. 
 Stowell stood by the rail at the stern and waved back his handker- 
 chief. FeneUa ! He could see nothing but her dark eyes and 
 beaming smile, and Gell's sad face was forgotten. 
 
 It was a fine fresh morning, with the sun filtering through a 
 veil of haze and the world answering to the call of Spring. As the 
 boat sailed on, the island iseemed to recede and shrink and then 
 sink into the sea until only the tops of the mountains were visible — 
 looking like a dim grey ghost that was lying at full stretch in 
 the sky. 
 
 At length it was gone; the sea-gulls which had followed the 
 steamer out had made their last swirl roimd and turned towards the 
 land, but Stowell was still looking back from the rail at the stern. 
 
 The dear little island ! How good it had been to him ! How 
 eager he would be to return to it ! 
 
 The sun broke clear, the waters widened and widened, the 
 glistening blue waves roUed on and on, the ship rose and fell to 
 the rhythm of the flowing tide, the throb of the engines beat time 
 to the deep surge of the sea, and the still deeper surge of youth 
 and love and health and hope within him. 
 
 Dear God, how happy he was ! What had he done to deserve 
 such happiness ? 
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 
 
 mother's law or judge's I/AW? 
 
 Bessie had passed a miserable night. Having been awake until 
 after five in the morning she was asleep at nine when somebody 
 knocked at her bedroom door. It was old Miss Ethel with a tele- 
 gram. Bessie opened it with trembling fingers. 
 
 " Nonsense dear am coming up as arranged Alick" 
 
MOTHER'S LAW OR JUDGE'S LAW 187 
 
 With fingers that trembled still more noticeably Bessie returned 
 the telegram to its envelope and slid it mider her pillow, saying 
 (with a twitching of the mouth which always came when she was 
 telling an untruth), 
 
 " It's from Mr. Gell. He wants me to meet him in Douglas. 
 I am to go up immediately." 
 
 " That's nice," said Miss Ethel. " The change will do you a 
 world of good, dear. I'll run down and hurry your breakfast, so 
 that you can catch the ten-thirty." 
 
 Bessie dressed hastily, put a few things into a little handbag, 
 and then sat down to write her promised letter. It was a terrible 
 ordeal. What could she say that would not betray her secret.'' 
 At length she wrote: 
 
 " Dear Alick, — ^Do forgive me. I must go away for a 
 little while. It is all my health. I have been ill all winter 
 and suffered more than anybody can know. But God is 
 good, and I will get my health and strength back soon, and 
 then I will return and we can be married and everything will 
 be alright. Do not think I do not love you because I am 
 leaving you like this. I have never loved you so dear as now. 
 But I am depressed, and I cannot get away from my 
 thoughts. And please, Alick dear, don't try to find me. I 
 shall be quite alright, and I shall think of you every night 
 before I go to sleep, and every morning when I awake. 
 So now I must close with all my love and kisses. 
 
 — Bessie, xxxxx " 
 
 Having written her letter, and blotted it with many tears, she 
 pinned it to the top of her pUlow, without remembering that the 
 telegram lay underneath. Then she hurried downstairs, swal- 
 lowed a mouthful of breakfast standing, said good-bye to her old 
 housemates with an effort at gaiety, and set off as for the 
 railway station. 
 
 She had no intention of going there. The morning haze was 
 thick on the edge of the sea, and as soon as she was out of sight 
 of the house she slipped across the fields to a winding lane which 
 led to the open country. 
 
 During the night, crying a good deal and stifling her sobs 
 under the bed-clothes, she had thought out all her plans. It was 
 still two months before her time, and to be separated from Alick as 
 long as that was too painful to think about. It was also too dan- 
 gerous. Long before the end of that time he would search for her 
 and find her, and then her secret would become known, and that 
 would be the end of everything. 
 
188 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 She had been to blame, but what had she done to be so un- 
 happy? Why should Nature be so cruel to a girl? Was there no 
 way of escape from it? 
 
 At length a light had dawned on her. Remembering what she 
 had heard of women doing (wives as well as unmarried girls) to 
 get rid of children who were not wanted, she determined that her 
 own child should be still-born. Why not? It threatened to 
 separate her from Alick — ^to turn his love for her into hatred. Why 
 should it come into the world to ruin her life, and his also ? 
 
 Yes, she would tire herself out, expose herself to some great 
 strain, some fearful exhaustion, and thereby bring on a sudden 
 and serious illness. Instead of taking the train she would walk 
 all the way home to her mother's house — ^twenty odd miles, fifteen 
 of them over a steep and rugged mountain road. It would be 
 dangerous to a girl in her condition, but not half so dangerous 
 as marrying Alick now, and running the risk of an end like that 
 of the poor young wife of the Peel fisherman. 
 
 And then it would be so much fairer. If her fault, her mis- 
 fortune, could be wiped out before she married Alick, nobody 
 could say she had deceived her husband. 
 
 Such was the wild gamble with life and death which Bessie had 
 decided upon at the prompting of love and shame and fear. The 
 consequences were not long in coming. 
 
 The winding lane had to cross the railway line near to a vil- 
 lage station before it reached the open country, and coming 
 sharply upon the level-crossing at a quick turning she found the 
 gates closed and a train drawing up at the platform. 
 
 She knew at once that this must be the train from Douglas 
 which Alick Gell was to travel by, and in a moment she saw him. 
 He was sitting alone in a first-class carriage, looking pale and 
 troubled. In the next compartment were four or five young advo- 
 cates from the south side of the island, who had been up to see 
 Stowell oiF by the steamer. They were smoking and laughing, 
 and one of them, who appeared to have been drinking also, seeing 
 Bessie coming up to the gate, dropped his window and swung oiF 
 his hat to her. 
 
 Bessie dropped back to the partial cover of the fence. Only 
 her fear of attracting attention restrained her from flying off 
 altogether. Alick had not yet seen her. It tore her terribly to see 
 how ill he looked. He was only three or four yards away from 
 her. His head was doAim. At one moment he took off his cap 
 and ran his fingers through his fair hair as if his head were 
 aching. She could scarcely resist an impulse to pass through the 
 
MOTHER'S LAW OR JUDGE'S LAW 18» 
 
 turnstile and hurry up to him. One look, one smile, one word, 
 and she would have thrown everything to the winds even yet. 
 
 But no, the guard waved his flag, the engine whistled, the train 
 jerked backward, then forward, and at the next instant it had 
 slid out of the station. Alick had not seen her. He was gone. It 
 had been like a stab at her heart to see him go. 
 
 II 
 
 Half an hour later she was on the rugged mountain road that 
 led to her mother's house in the north of the island. Her first fear 
 was the fear of being overtaken and carried back. At Silverburn, 
 where a deep river gurgles under the shadow of a dark bridge, she 
 heard the crack of whips, the clatter of horses' hoofs and the 
 whoop of loud voices. 
 
 It was nothing. Only two farm shandries, the first containing 
 a couple of full-blooded farm girls, and the second a couple of 
 lusty farm lads, racing home after market, laughing wildly and 
 shouting to each in the free language of the countryside. It was 
 like something out of her former life — one of the outbreaks of 
 animal instinct that had brought her to where she was. 
 
 But no matter ! She would be a proud and happy woman yet 
 — the Sheean ny Feaynid had said so. 
 
 After the fear of being pursued came the fear of being lost — 
 becoming an outcast and a wanderer. She had toiled up to the 
 Black Fort on the breast of the hill. The morning haze had 
 vanished by this time, the sun had come out, the larks were singing 
 in the cloudless sky, the smell of spring was rising from the young 
 grass in the fields, the roadsides were yellow with primroses and 
 daffodils, and the whole world was looking glad with the promise 
 of the beautiful new year that was already on the wing. It 
 was heart-breaking. 
 
 Feeling hot and tired after her climb, she sat on a stone. The 
 sea was open from that point, and on the farthest rim of it she 
 could see a red-funnelled steamer and two black shafts of smoke. 
 Stowell! Never before had she thought bitterly of him. But 
 he was there, going up to London in comfort, in luxury, 
 while she .... 
 
 It was cruel. But crueller than her bitter thoughts of Stowell 
 were her tender thoughts of Gell. He would be at Derby- Haven 
 now, reading (with that twitching of the lower lip which she knew 
 so well) the letter she had left behind for him, while she was here, 
 running away from the arms of the man who loved her. But no 
 matter about that, either ! One day, two days, three days, a week 
 
190 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 perhaps, and she would return to him. She was to be a proud and 
 happy woman yet — ^the Sheean ny Feaynid had said so. 
 
 Hours passed. The road stretched out and! out, (became 
 steeper and steeper. Bessie felt more and more tired. She was 
 often compelled to sit by the wayside, and sometimes, being worn 
 out by the want of sleep, she fell into a dose. The sky darkened 
 and dropped ; the sun went down behind the mountains to the west 
 with a straight black bar across its face that was like a heavy lid 
 over a sullen eye. Would she be able to reach home that night? 
 She would ! She must ! Alick was waiting for her to come back. 
 She dare not keep him long. 
 
 Evening had closed in before she reached the top of the hill. 
 It was a long waste of bracken and black rock, with no farms 
 anywhere, and only a few thatched cottages that crouched in the 
 sheltered places like frightened cattle in a storm. Feeling weak 
 and faint from long climbing and want of food, she was about to 
 sit down again and cry, having lost hope of reaching her mother's 
 house that night, when she came upon a little lamb, scarcely a 
 month old, which had strayed away from the flock and was too 
 tired to go farther. 
 
 The poor creature bleated piteously into her face, and she 
 lifted it up in her arms and carried it a long half mile (the lost 
 carrying the lost, the desolate comforting the desolate) until she 
 came to a high gate at which a mother sheep was plunging 
 furiously in her efforts to get out to them. Bessie put the lamb 
 to its feet, and it clambered through the bars, plucked at the teat, 
 and then there was peace and silence. 
 
 This strengthened her and she went on for some time longer 
 with a cheerful heart. Yes, she must reach home that night. 
 And if it was as late as midnight before she got there, so much 
 the better! Nobody must see her come, and then her mother 
 would be able to conceal everything. 
 
 Night fell. It began to rain and the wind to rise. She had 
 never been afraid of darkness or bad weather, but now she took 
 a wild delight in them. Remembering what other women had 
 done, she took off her shoes and walked on the wet roads in her 
 stockings. It was risky but she cared nothing about that. It 
 might bring on a fever, but she was strong — she would soon 
 get over it. 
 
 Farmers returning empty from market offered her a lift, but 
 she declined and toiled on. The lighted windows of the farm- 
 houses, gleaming through the darkness, called her into warmth 
 and shelter, but she struggled along. The soles of her stockings 
 were soon worn to shreds and the stones of the roads were begin- 
 
MOTHER'S LAW OR JUDGE'S LAW 191 
 
 ning to cut her feet, but she would not put on her shoes. In her. 
 frenzy she hardly felt the pain. And besides, what she was suf- 
 fering for Alick was as nothing compared to what Alick had suf- 
 fered for her. Only one night ! It would soon be over. 
 
 She had walked . at her slow pace down a deep descent and 
 through a long valley when she came upon an inn and a big barn 
 that was a scene of great festivity. She knew what it was. It 
 was one of the " Bachelors' Balls " which, beginning with Oiel 
 Thomase Dhoo (the Eve of Black Thomas) and going on through 
 the spring of the year, the unmarried men in remote places gave 
 to the unmarried girls of the parish. 
 
 The rain was now falling in torrents and the wind had risen to 
 the strength of a gale, but it must have been close and hot inside 
 the barn, for as Bessie passed on the other side of the way, the 
 doors were thrown open. The rude place was densely crowded. 
 Stable lamps hung from the rough-hewn rafters. At one end the 
 musicians sat on a platform raised on barrels; at the other end 
 girls in white blouses were serving tea from a long plank covered 
 with a table-cloth and resting on trestles. In the space between, a 
 dense group of young men and women were dancing with 
 furious energy. 
 
 This, too, was like something out of her own life. Ah, if 
 somebody had only told her .... 
 
 But what matter! She would be a proud and happy woman 
 yet — the Sheean ny Feaynid had said so. 
 
 It was now midnight by the wrist-watch that Alick had given 
 her, and she had still another hill to climb, steeper than the last if 
 shorter. While she was going up the rain flogged her face as with 
 whipcord, and, when she reached the top, the wind, sweeping 
 across the low-lying lands from the sea, tore at her skirts as if it 
 were trying to strip her naked. At one moment it brought her to 
 her knees, and she thought she would never be able to rise to her 
 feet again. It was very dark. She was feeling weak and helpless. 
 
 Once more she remembered Stowell. He would be on his way 
 to London now. She could see him (Alick had often painted such 
 pictures) sitting in. a brightly-lit first-class railway carriage, smok- 
 ing cigarettes and sipping coffee. 
 
 At this thought her whole soul rose in revolt. Why was he 
 there while she was here? She had never loved him; he had never, 
 loved her ; they had both done wrong. But why for the same fault 
 should there be such different punishment? 
 
 People who went to churches and chapels talked of nature and 
 God. They said God was good and He was the God of nature. 
 It was a lie — a deception! If God was good He was not the 
 
192 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 God of nature. If He was the God of nature He was not good. 
 Nature was cruel and pitiless. Only to a man was it kind. If you 
 were a woman it had no mercy on you. It never forgot you; it 
 never forgave you. Therefore a woman had a right to fight it, 
 and when it threatened to destroy her happiness, and the happiness 
 of those who loved her, she had a right to kill it. 
 
 That was what she was doing now. Perhaps she had done it 
 already. The heavy burden that had been lying so long under her 
 heart had given no sign of life for hours. So much the better! 
 That passage in her life must be dead and buried. Victor Stowell 
 must be wiped out for ever. Then she could marry Alick Gell with 
 a clean heart and conscience. 
 
 Therefore, courage, courage! She would be a proud and 
 happy woman yet — ^the Sheean ny Feaynid had said so. 
 
 Only the great thing was to get home before daybreak, so that 
 nobody might see her until all was over. 
 
 Somewhere in the dead and vacant dawn a pale, forlorn-look- 
 ing woman, whom nobody could have known for Bessie Collister, 
 was approaching the village of the glen. She had been eighteen 
 hours on her journey, most of the time on her feet. Her fur- 
 lined cloak was sodden and heavy. Her black hair had been torn 
 from its knot and was hanging dank over her neck and shoulders. 
 Her feet, in her dry boots, were cold and bleeding. A silk scarf 
 which had been tied over her closely-fitting fur cap was dripping, 
 and a little bag on her arms was wet through with all that was 
 contained in it. 
 
 She had expected to arrive before break of day, but nobody in 
 the village was yet stirring. In the long street of whitewashed 
 houses all the window blinds were still down and looking like 
 closed eye-lids. 
 
 She tied up her hair, removed the scarf and put on a veil from 
 her handbag, drew it closely over her face, and then walked with 
 head down and a step as light as she could make it, through the 
 sleeping village. 
 
 She met nobody. Not a door was opened; not a blind was 
 drawn aside; she had not been seen. She drew a long breath of 
 relief. But suddenly, with the first sight of the mill, came a 
 stab of memory, 
 
 Dan Baldromma! 
 
 Since the witch-doctor had told her that though Dan might 
 page and tear he could do no harm to her or to Alick she had ceased 
 to think of him. But why had she not thought of the harm he 
 might do to her mother? All the way up since she was a child 
 she had seen the tyrannies he had inflicted upon her mother through 
 
MOTHER'S LAW OR JUDGE'S LAW 193 
 
 her. What fresh tyranny would he inflict on her now ? — ^now that 
 she was coming home like this to be a burden to ... . 
 
 For a moment Bessie told herself she must go back even yet. 
 But she was too weak and too ill to go one step farther. All the 
 same she could not face her step-father in her present con- 
 dition. If she could only get upstairs to her bedroom and sleep — 
 sleep, sleep ! 
 
 She listened for the mill-wheel — ^it was not working. She 
 looked at the mill-door — it had not yet been opened. It was im- 
 possible that Dan could be in bed — he was such an early riser. He 
 must have gone up the brews to look at the heifers in the top fields. 
 
 With a slow step she went over to the dwelling-house. The 
 door was shut, but she could hear sounds from the kitchen. There 
 was the shuffling of slow feet, accompanied by the tap of a walk- 
 ing-stick; then the blowing and coughing of bellows and the 
 crackling of burning gorse; and then the measured beating of a 
 foot on the hearthstone, keeping time to a husky and tremulous 
 voice that was singing — 
 
 " Safe in the arms of Jesus, 
 Safe in His tender care." 
 
 With a palpitating heart Bessie lifted the latch, pushed the 
 door open and took one step into the kitchen. Her mother, who 
 was still wearing her night-cap, was sitting on the three-legged 
 stool in the choillagh, stirring porridge in the oven-pot that hung 
 from the slovn-ie. She had heard the click of the latch and was 
 looking round. 
 
 There was silence for a moment. Bessie tried to speak and 
 could not. The old woman rose on rigid limbs and her hand on the 
 handle of her stick was trembling. It was just as if the spirit 
 of someone she had been thinking about had suddenly appeared 
 before her. 
 
 " Is it thyself, girl? " she said, in a breathless whisper. 
 
 " Mother ! " cried Bessie, and she took another step forward. 
 
 Again there was a moment of silence. With her heart at her 
 lips Bessie saw that her mother's eyes were wandering over her 
 figure. Then the stick dropped from the old woman's hand to the 
 floor and she stretched out her arms, and her thin hands shook like 
 withered leaves. 
 
 " Bolla veen! boUa veen ! " she cried, in a low voice that was a 
 sob. " It's my own case over again." 
 
 And then the girl fell into her mother's arms and buried her 
 head in her breast and cried, as only a suffering child can cry, 
 helplessly, piteously. 
 13 
 
194 TBB MASTER OF MAN 
 
 A moment later, there was a heavy footstep outside, and the 
 ring of an iron tool thrown down on the " street." The old woman 
 raised her face with a look of fear. 
 
 " It's thy father," she whispered. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Dan Baldromma had risen earlier than usual that morning. 
 For more than a week there had not been water enough to his mill- 
 wheel for his liking, and suspecting the cause of the shortage he 
 had put a pick over his shoulder and walked up the glen. 
 
 There was a little croft on the top of the brews half a mile 
 nearer to the mountain. It was called Baldromma-beg (the little 
 Baldromma) and its occupants (sub-tenants of Dan Baldromma) 
 were a quaint old couple — ^Will SkiUicorne, a long, slow-eyed, 
 slow-legged person who was a class-leader among the " Primi- 
 tives," and his wife, Bridget, a typical little Manxwoman of her 
 class, keen-eyed, quick-tongued, illiterate and superstitious. 
 
 Their croft was thirsty land, though water in abundance was 
 so near, and to every request that it should be laid on in pipes from 
 the glen, Dan had said, " Let your wife carry it — ^what else is the 
 woman there for .'' " 
 
 Bridget had carried it for ten years. Then her anger getting 
 the better of her, she put on a pair of her husband's big boots and 
 rolled two great boulders into a neck of the river, with the result 
 that a deep stream of sweet water came flowing down to her 
 house and fields. 
 
 This was just what Dan had suspected, and coming upon the 
 new-made dam, he stretched his legs across it, swung his pick and 
 sent the boulders tumbling down the glen, with a torrent of water 
 from Baldromma-beg at the back of them. 
 
 But Bridget, also, had risen earlier than usual that morning, 
 and, hearing the sound of Dan's pick, she went out to him at his 
 bad work and fell on him with hot reproaches. 
 
 " Was there nothing doing down at the mill, Dan CoUister," 
 she cried, " that thou must be coming up here to put thy evil eye 
 on other people's places ? " 
 
 " Get thee indoors, woman," growled Dan, " and put thy 
 house in order." 
 
 " My house in order ? Mine ? And what about thine ? Thine 
 that is a disgrace to the parish and the talk of the island." 
 
 " Keep a civil tongue in thy head, Mrs. SkiUicorne, or maybe 
 I'll be showing thee the road at HoUantide." 
 
 " Turn me out of the croft, will thou ? Do it and welcome ! 
 
MOTBER'8 LAW OB JUDGE'S LAW 195 
 
 I give thee lave. It would be middling aisy to find a better farm, 
 and Satan himself couldn't find a worse landlord. But set thou 
 one foot on this land until my year is over and if there's a bucket 
 of dirty water on the cowhouse floor I'll throw it over thee. Put 
 my house in order indeed! Where's thy daughter, eh.'' Where's 
 thy daughter, I say ? " , 
 
 " I've got no daughter, woman, and well thou knows it," 
 said Dan. 
 
 " 'Deed I do. No wonder the Lord wouldn't trust thee with a 
 daughter of thy own, the way thou's brought up this one. The 
 slut! The strumpet! Away with thee and look for her — ^it will 
 become thee better." 
 
 But Dan having finished his work was now plunging down the 
 glen and old Will Skillicorne had come out of his house half 
 dressed, with his braces hanging behind him. 
 
 " Come in, woman — ^lave the man to God," said Will. 
 
 " God indeed ! The dirt ! The ugly black toad ! God wouldn't 
 bemane Himself talking to the like." 
 
 " Thou's done it this time, though, I'm thinking. Thou heard 
 what he said about HoUantide ? " 
 
 " Chut ! Get thee back to bed. What's thou putting thy mouth 
 in for? Who knows where the man himself will be by that time.'' " 
 
 With a face like a black cloud after this encounter, Dan threw 
 down his pick on the cobbles of the street and went into the kitchen 
 to work off his anger on his wife. 
 
 " That's what thou's done for me, ma'am! There's not a 
 trollop in the parish that isn't throwing thy daughter's bad doings 
 in my face." 
 
 The kitchen was full of smoke, for the porridge in the oven- 
 pot had been allowed to burn, and it was not until he was standing 
 back to the fire, putting his pipe in the pocket of his open waist- 
 coat, that Dan saw Bessie where she had seated herself, after 
 breaking out of her mother's arms, by the table and in the 
 darkest comer. 
 
 He took in the girl's situation at a glance, but after the man- 
 ner of the man he pretended not to do so. 
 
 " Grod bless my soul," he cried. " Back, is she.? Well, well! 
 But what did I say, mother ? ' No need to send the Cross Vustha 
 (the fiery cross) after her, she'll come home.' And my goodness 
 the grand woman's she's grown ! Fur caps and fur-lined cloaks 
 and I don't know the what! Just come to put a sight on the 
 mother and the ould man, I suppose. No pride at all at all! I 
 •wouldn't trust but there's a grand carriage waiting for her at the 
 corner of the road." 
 
196 TSE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Aisj, man, aisy," said Mrs. CoUister, picking up her stick, 
 " don't thou see the girl has walked? " 
 
 " Walked, has she? " said Dan, raising his thick eyebrows in 
 pretended astonishment. " You don't say ! All the way from 
 Castletown? Well, well! So that's how it is, is it? The young 
 waistrel has thrown her over, has he ? " 
 
 Bessie had to put her hand to her throat to keep back the cry 
 that was bubbling up. 
 
 " Aisy, man, aisy with the like," said the old woman. But Dan 
 was for showing no mercy. 
 
 " Goodness me, the airs she gave herself going away! I might 
 shut my door on her, but there would be others to open theirs. 
 And now they have opened them, and shut them too, I'm thinking." 
 
 Bessie, crushed and silent, was clutching the end of the table. 
 Dan stepped over to her, laid hold of her left hand, lifted it up, 
 as if looking for her wedding ring, and then flung it away. 
 
 " Nothing! " he said. " She's got nothing for it neither. I 
 might have followed her to Castletown, but I didn't. ' I'll lave 
 her to it,' I thought. ' Maybe the girl's cleverer than we thought, 
 and will come home mistress of Baldromma and a thousand good 
 acres besides.' But no, not a ha'porth! And now she has come 
 back to ate us up for the rest of our lives ! The toot ! The boght ! 
 The booby ! " 
 
 " Dan CoUister," said the old woman, " don't thou see the girl 
 is iU? " 
 
 " 111, is she? " said Dan. " I wouldn't trust but she is, ma'am. 
 So it's worse than I thought, and maybe before long there'll be 
 another mouth to feed." 
 
 Bessie dropped her head on the table. 
 
 " But not in this house, if you plaze, miss. It happened here 
 once before, and the island would be having a fine laugh at me if 
 it happened again." 
 
 Once more Dan stepped over to Bessie and touched her arm. 
 
 " You're like a dead letter, you've come to the wrong address, 
 mistress. It wasn't Dan Baldromma's thatched cottage you were 
 wanting, but the big slate house down the road where the paycocks 
 are scraming. I'll trouble you to go there." 
 
 " Sakes alive, man," cried the old woman, " thou'rt not for 
 turning the girl out of doors? " 
 
 " I am that, ma'am," said Dan, going over to the door. " No 
 trollop shall be telling me again that my house is the disgrace 
 of the parish and the talk of the island." 
 
 Then throwing the door wide and rattling the catch of it, 
 he said. 
 
MOTHER'S LAW OR JUDGE'S LAW 197 
 
 " Out of my house, miss ! Out of it! Out of it! " 
 
 Bessie, who had been sitting motionless, raised her head and 
 rose to go, although scarcely able to take a step forward, when she 
 felt a hand that was trembling like a leaf laid on her shoulder. 
 
 " Stay thou there, and leave this to me." 
 
 It was the old woman who had been crouching over the fire on 
 the three-legged stool and had now risen, thrown her stick away 
 as if she had no longer any need of it, and was facing her husband 
 with blazing eyes. 
 
 " Thou talks and talks of this house as thine and thine," she 
 said. " What made it thine .'' " 
 
 " The law, if thou wants to know, woman," said Dan. 
 
 " Then the law is a robber and a thief." 
 
 Dan looked at his wife in astonishment, and then burst into a 
 fit of forced laughter. 
 
 " Well, that's good! That's rich! That's wonderful! What 
 next, I wonder? " 
 
 " Do you want me to tell thee the truth, Dan CoUister ? Before 
 the girl, too .'' Then there's not a stick or a stone in the place that 
 in the eyes of heaven does not belong to me." 
 
 " What.? " 
 
 " Not a stick or a stone, except the landlord's, that wasn't 
 bought with my father's money — John Corteen, a man of God, if 
 ever there was one." 
 
 " Pity his daughter didn't take after him, then." 
 
 " Pity enough, Dan CoUister. But when I brought shame into 
 his house he forgave me. And when the finger of death was on the 
 man the only trouble he had in life was what was to become of his 
 girl when he was gone." 
 
 " Truth enough, ma'am, he had to find thee a husband, 
 hadn't he.'' " 
 
 " He hadn't far to look, though. And if thou had nothing in 
 thy pocket and not much on thy back thou had plenty in thy mouth 
 to make up for it. Thou were not afraid of scandal ! Thou didn't 
 mind marrying a girl who had been talked of with another man ! " 
 
 " And I did, didn't I ? " 
 
 " Thou did, God forgive thee ! But not till the man's trem- 
 bling hand had reached up to the hole in the thatch over his bed 
 for his stocking purse and counted the money out to thee. Three 
 hundred good Manx pounds he had worked thirty years for and 
 saved up for his daughter. And then thou swore on the Holy 
 Book to be good to his girl and her baby, and the man's dying eyes 
 on thee. And now — ^now thou talks of turning my girl out of the 
 
198 TBB MASTER OF MAN 
 
 house — ^this house that would have been her house some day if thou 
 had not come between us. But no ! Thou shan't do that." 
 
 "Shan't I?" 
 
 " 'Deed thou shan't ! She may have done wrong, but if she has 
 it's no more than her mother did before her, and if I daren't turn 
 her out for it thou shalt not." 
 
 " We'll see, ma'am, we'll see,'' said Dan. He was buttoning up 
 his waistcoat and putting on his coat. 
 
 " It's no use talking to a woman. There's not much sense to 
 be got out of the like anyway. But when a man marries, the prop- 
 erty of the wife becomes the property of the husband — that's 
 Dempster's law, isn't it? And standing up for your legal rights, 
 and not being forced by your wife, or anybody else, to find main- 
 tenance for another man's offspring when it comes — ^that's Demp- 
 ster's law too, I belave." 
 
 " Yes," said the old woman, " and standing up for your own 
 flesh and blood when she's sick and weak and the world is going 
 cold on her and she has nowhere else to lay her head in her 
 trouble — ^that's Mother's law, Dan CoUister, and it's older than 
 the Dempster's, I'm thinking." 
 
 " Do as you plaze, ma'am," said Dan. " If you want more 
 noising about the bad doings of your daughter it's all as one to me." 
 
 He took his billycock hat down from the " lath " under the 
 ceiling and continued, 
 
 " I'll hear what the Speaker has to say about this, though. His 
 wife wasn't for doing much for thee when the honour of this house 
 was in question, but maybe she'll alter her tune now that it's the 
 honour of her own." 
 
 He drew his whip from its nail over the fireplace and stepped 
 to the door. 
 
 " And if this matter ends as I expect I'll be hearing what the 
 Coorts have to say about it, too. Young Mr. Sto'U is to be made 
 Dempster they're telling me. They're putting him in for it, any- 
 way, and he is bosom friend to the Spaker's son. But friend or 
 no friend," he said, with his hand on the hasp, and ready to go, 
 " maybe his first job when he comes back to the island will be to 
 send his Coroner to this house to turn the man's mistress and her 
 by-child into the road." 
 
 " Tell him to send her coffin at the same time, then," cried 
 the old woman, almost screaming. " Mine too, Dan CoUister. 
 That's the only way he'll turn my daughter out of this house, I 
 promise thee." 
 
 But the old woman collapsed the moment her husband had 
 gone, and staggering to the rocking-chair she dropped into it and 
 
THE BOUL OF SAGAR igg 
 
 cried. Then Bessie, who had not yet spoken, rose and said, 
 
 crying herself, 
 
 " Don't cry, I'll go away myself, mother." 
 
 But the old woman was up again in a moment. 
 
 " No, thou'U not," she said. " Thou'll go up to thy bedroom 
 
 in the dairy loft — the one thou had in the innocent old times 
 
 gone by. Oome, take my arm — ^my good arm, girl. Lean on 
 
 me, woman-bogh." 
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 
 
 THE SOUL OF HAGAK 
 
 Two hours had passed. Bessie was in her bedroom — the little 
 one-eyed chamber (entered from the first landing on the stairs) in 
 which she had dressed for Douglas. But the sheet of silvered 
 glass on the whitewashed wall which had shone then with the light 
 of her beaming eyes was now reflecting her broken, tear-stained, 
 woebegone face. 
 
 She knew that her j ourney had been in vain, that her sufferings 
 had been wasted. Her child was not to be stillborn. Through the 
 closed door she heard Dan Baldromma going off in the stiff cart. 
 He was going to the Speaker, to threaten him with the shame of her 
 imborn child, and to call upon him to compel his son to marry her. 
 
 Wild, blind error ! But what would be the result ? Alick 
 would hear of her whereabouts and learn of her condition and that 
 would be the end of everything between them. All her secret 
 scheme to wipe out her fault, to keep her name clean for Alick, to 
 preserve his beautiful faith in her, would be destroyed, and he 
 would be dead to her for ever. 
 
 But no, come what would that should not be ! And if the only 
 way to prevent it was to make away with her child when it came 
 she must do so. Only nobody must know — not even her mother. 
 
 Time and again the old woman came hobbling upstairs, bring- 
 ing food and trying to comfort her. 
 
 " Will I send for Doctor Clucas, Bessie ? " 
 
 " No, no. I sh^l be better in the morning." 
 
 The day passed hieavily. 'She could not lie down. Sometimes 
 she sat on the edge of the bed ; sometimes stood and held on to the 
 end of it ; and sometimes walked to and fro in the narrow space of 
 her bedroom floor. Having no window in her room her only sight 
 of the world without was through the skylight in the thatch, which 
 showed nothing but the sky. The only sound that reached her 
 was the squealing of a pig that was being killed at a neighbour- 
 ing farm. 
 
200 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 At length darkness fell. Hitherto she had been thinking of 
 her unborn child with a certain tenderness, even a certain pity. 
 But now, in the wild disorder of her senses, she began to hate it. 
 It seemed to be some evil spirit that was coming into the world to 
 destroy everybody. Why shouldn't she kill it .'' She would ! Only 
 she must be alone — quite alone. 
 
 Shivering, perspiring, weak, dizzy, she was sitting in the dark- 
 ness when her mother came to say good-night. 
 
 " Here are a few broth. Take them. They'll warm thee." 
 
 " No, no." 
 
 " Come, let me coax thee, bogh." 
 
 Bessie refused again, and the old woman's eyes began to fill. 
 
 " Will I stay up the night with thee, Bessie.'' " 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! " 
 
 " I'll leave my door open then, and if thou art wanting any- 
 thing thou'U call." 
 
 " Yes, yes." 
 
 " Thy father isn't home yet, and if thou'rt no better when he 
 goes by thy door thou must tell him and he'll let me know." 
 
 Bessie raised her eyes in astonishment, and the old woman, with 
 a shamefaced look, began to apologize for her husband. He was 
 not so bad after all, and when a woman had taken a man for better 
 or worse .... 
 
 " Do you say that, mother? " 
 
 Something quivered in the old woman's wrinkled throat. 
 
 " Well, we women are all alike, thou knows." 
 
 " Good-night and go to sleep, mother." 
 
 Bessie hustled her mother out of the room, but hardly had she 
 gone than she wanted to call her back. 
 
 " Mother ! Mother ! " she cried' in the sudden access of her 
 pain, but though her door was ajar her mother, who was going 
 deaf, did not hear her. 
 
 At the next moment she was glad. Her mother believed in 
 God and religion. To burden her conscience with any knowledge 
 of what she meant to do would be too cruel. 
 
 But Bessie's terror increased at every moment. The night out- 
 side was quiet, yet the air seemed to be full of fearful cries. At the 
 bidding of some instinctive impulse she blew out the candle, and 
 then, in the darkness and solitude, a great terror took hold of her. 
 
 " Alick ! Alick ! " she cried, but only the deep night heard 
 her. At last, in the paroxysm of her pain, she fell back on the 
 bed — she was unconscious. 
 
 When she came to herself again she had a sense of blessed 
 ease, like that of sailing into a quiet fcarbour out of a tempestuous 
 
THE 80VL OF HAGAR 201 
 
 » 
 
 sea. Before she opened her eyes she heard a faint cry. She 
 thought at first it was only a memory of the bleating of the lost 
 lamb on the mountains. But the cry came again and then she knew 
 what had happened — her child had been born ! 
 
 Time passed — how long or what she did in it, she never after- 
 wards knew. Her weakness seemed to have gone and she had a 
 feeling of surprising strength. The bitterness of her heart had 
 gone too, and a flood of happiness was sweeping over her. 
 
 It was motherhood ! To Bessie too, in her misery and shame, 
 the merciful angel of mother-love had come. Her child ! Hers ! 
 Hers! Make away with it .'' Kill it? No, not for world's of worlds ! 
 
 It was a boy too ! Thank God it was a boy ! A woman was so 
 weak; she had so much to suffer, so many things to think about. 
 But a man was strong and free. He could fight his own way in 
 life. And her boy would fight for her also, and make amends for 
 all she had gone through. 
 
 It was the middle of the night. The glimmering and guttering 
 candle on the wash-table (she had been up and had lit it afresh) 
 was casting dark shadows in the room. Only a little dairy loft 
 with the turfy thatch overhead, and the sheepskin rugs underfoot, 
 but oh, how it shone with glory! 
 
 Bessie was singing to her baby (words and tune springing to 
 her mind in a moment) when suddenly she heard soimds from out- 
 side. They were the rattle of cart wheels and the clatter of horse's 
 hoofs on the cobbles of the " street." 
 
 Dan Baldromma had come home ! 
 
 Her heart seemed to stop its beating. She blew out her candle 
 and listened, scarcely drawing breath. She heard her step-father 
 tipping up his stiff-cart and then shouting at his horse as he 
 dragged off its harness in the stable. After that she heard him 
 coming into the house and throwing his heavy boots on to the 
 hearthstone. Then she heard the thud, thud, thud of the old man's 
 stockinged feet on the kitchen floor — he was about to come upstairs. 
 
 At that moment the child, who had been asleep on her arm, 
 awoke and cried. Only a feeble cry, half-smothered by the close- 
 ne'ss of the little mouth to her breast, but in Bessie's ears it sounded 
 like thunder. If her step-father heard it, what would he do? 
 Involuntarily, and before she knew what she was doing, she put 
 her hand over the child's mouth. 
 
 Then thud, thud, thud ! Dan Baldromma was coming upstairs. 
 Bessie could hear his thick breathing. He had reached the land- 
 ing. He seemed to stop for a moment outside her door. But he 
 passed on, went up the second short flight, pushed open the door 
 of her mother's room and clashed it noisily behind him. 
 
202 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Then Bessie drew breath and turned back to her child. She 
 was stocked to find that in her terror she had been holding her 
 trembling hand tightly down on the child's mouth. It had only 
 been for a moment (what had seemed like a moment), but when 
 she took her hand away and listened, in the throbbing darkness, 
 for the child's soft breathing, no sound seemed to come. 
 
 With shaking fingers she lit her candle again, and then held 
 the light to the baby's face. 
 
 The little, helpless, innocent face lay stiU. 
 
 " Can it be possible .... no, no, God forbid it ! " 
 
 But at length the awful truth came surging down on her. She 
 had killed her child. 
 
 II 
 
 When Bessie awoke the next day the sun was shining on her 
 eye-lids from the skylight in the thatch. She had some difficulty 
 in realising where she was. Before opening her eyes she heard 
 the muffled lowing of the cows in the closed-up cow-house, and had 
 an impulse to do as she had done in earlier days — get up and milk 
 them. At the next moment she heard her liiother's shuffling step on 
 the kitchen floor, and then the tide of memory swept back on her. 
 
 But she was a different woman this morning. She had no 
 remorse now, no qualm, no compunction. What she had done, she 
 had done, and after all it was the best thing that could have 
 happened — ^best for her, best for Alick, best for everybody. 
 
 Her child being dead she no longer loved it. All she had to do 
 was to bury it away somewhere, and then everything would go on 
 as she had intended. Meantime (before going to sleep) she had 
 taken her precautions. Nobody must know. If there had been 
 reasons why she should not take her mother into her confidence last 
 night they were now increased tenfold. 
 
 After a while her mother came up with her breakfast. A veil 
 seemed to dim the old woman's eyes — she looked as if she had 
 been crying. 
 
 " How are thou now, bogh? " 
 
 " Better ! Much better ! I told you I should be better in 
 the morning." 
 
 The old woman was silent for a moment and then said, 
 
 " Thou were not up and downstairs in the night, Bessie ? " 
 
 " 'Deed no ! Why should you think so ? " 
 
 " Because I shut the wash-house door when I went to bed and 
 it was open when I came down in the morning." 
 
 Bessie's lips trembled, but she made no answer. 
 
 A little later she heard her step-father talking loudly in the 
 
TEE SOUL OF SAGAB 203 
 
 kitchen. He had seen the Speaker, having waited all day for him. 
 There had been a stormy scene. The big man had foamed at the 
 mouth, talked about blackmail, threatened to turn him out of the 
 farm at HoUantide, and finally shouted for Tom Kertnode, his 
 steward, to fling him into the road. 
 
 " I lave it with you. Sir," Dan had answered. " If you prefer 
 the new Dempster, when he comes, to see justice done to the girl, 
 it's all as one to me." 
 
 Bessie could have laughed. Wicked, selfish, scheming — how 
 she was going to defeat it ! 
 
 All morning she lay quiet, thinking out her plans. Half a 
 mile up the glen there was a large stone of irregular shape, sur- 
 rounded by a wild tangle of briar and goirse. The Manx called it 
 the Claghny-Dooiney-marroo — ^the dead man's stone, the body of a 
 murdered man having been found on it. By reason of this grue- 
 some association of the bloody hand upon it, few approached the 
 stone by day and the bravest man (unless he were in drink) would 
 hesitate to go near it by night. 
 
 Bessie decided to bury her child under the Clagh-ny-Dooiney. 
 It would lie hidden for ever there; nobody would find it. 
 
 The day was long in passing, for Bessie was waiting for the 
 Bight. She heard the young lambs bleating in the fields and the 
 cocks crowing in the haggard. A linnet perched on the ledge of 
 her skylight (hers mother had opened it) and looked in on her 
 and sang. 
 
 At length the sky darkened and night fell. The moon (it was 
 in its first quarter) sailed across her patch of sky and disappeared. 
 Once or twice the skylight was aglow with a palpitating red light 
 — someone was burning gorse on the mountains. But the fires died 
 down and then there was nothing save the sky with its stars. 
 
 Her mother came again to say good-night. She had the pitiful 
 look of a woman who was struggling to keep back her tears. 
 
 " Wilt thou not sit up, Bessie, while I make thy bed for thee.'' " 
 
 Bessie started and then stammered : " Oh, no ! I mean .... 
 it will do in the morning." 
 
 The old woman looked down at her with eyes which seemed to 
 say, " Can thou not trust thy mother, girl? " But she only sighed 
 and went off to bed. 
 
 Somewhere in the early morning (Dan having gone to bed also) 
 Bessie got up to make ready. She found herself very weak, and 
 it took her a long time to dress. When she was about to put on her 
 shoes she remembered that they were new and told herself 
 they would creak as she went downstairs, so she decided to go 
 barefoot again. 
 
204 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Having finished her dressing she took from under the bed- 
 clothes what she had hidden there, and began to wrap it in a large 
 silk scarf. It was the scarf she had worn in the storm — a present 
 from Alickj with " Bessie " stamped on one corner. 
 
 Seeing her name at the last moment, she tore a strip of the 
 scarf away, and threw it aside (intending to destroy it in the 
 morning), opened her door, listened for an instant and then crept 
 downstairs and out of the house. 
 
 The night was chill and the ground struck cold into her body. 
 It was very dark, for the moon and stars had gone out, and there 
 was no light anywhere except the dull red of the gorse fires on the 
 mountains, which had sunk so low as to look like a dying eye. But 
 Bessie could have found her way blindfolded. 
 
 Carrying her burden she crossed the wooden bridge and 
 reached the path that went up the glen. Just as she did so she 
 heard the sound of singing, of laughter and of carriage-wheels on 
 the high road. A company of jolly girls and boys were driving 
 home after one of their Bachelor Balls in a neighbouring parish. 
 That cut deep, but Bessie thought of Alick and the wound passed 
 away. She would return to him in a few days ; they would be mar- 
 ried soon, and then she, too, would be glad and happy. 
 
 How dark it was under the trees, though ! She had left it late. 
 The dawn was near, for the first birds were beginning to call. 
 
 " It must be here," she thought, and she slipped down from 
 the path to the bed of the glen. 
 
 But the trees were thicker there, and, being already in early 
 leaf, they obscured the little light that was left in the sky. Where 
 could the stone be? The briars were tearing at her dress and the 
 tall nettles were stinging her hands. She was feeling weak and 
 lost and had begun to cry. How the dogs howled at her step- 
 father's farm! 
 
 Suddenly a breeze rose and fanned the gorse fires on the moun- 
 tains to a crackling glow. And then a red flame rent the darkness 
 and lighted up the valley from end to end, making it for a few 
 moments almost as clear as day. 
 
 Bessie was terrified. Here was the Clagh-ny-Dooiney almost 
 at her feet, but this bright light was like an accusing eye from 
 heaven looking down on her and pointing her out. 
 
 For a moment she wanted to- drop down among the briars and 
 hide herself. But making a call on her resolution she crept up 
 to the big stone, stooped, pushed her burden under the overlapping 
 lip of it, and then rose, turned about and ran. 
 
 Trembling and weeping she stumbled her way home. It was 
 .lighter now. The day was coming rapidly and the small spring 
 
THE SOUL OF HAGAR 205 
 
 leaves were shivering in the cold wind that runs over the earth 
 before the dawn. The lambs were bleating in the unseen fields, 
 and the newly-born ones were making their first pitiful cry. It 
 sounded like the cry of her child as she had heard it last night, 
 and it tore her terribly. 
 
 The little face, the little hands, the little feet she had left 
 behind — why had she not been brave and strong and faced the 
 world with them? 
 
 Should she stop and go back ! She tried to do so but could not. 
 The more she wanted to return the faster she ran away. 
 
 Her strength was failing her, and she was scarcely able to put 
 one foot before another. Often she stumbled and fell and got up 
 again. Was she going the right way home ? 
 
 " Alick ! Alick ! " she cried, and the hot tears fell over her 
 cold cheeks. 
 
 At last she saw the dark roof of the mill-house against the 
 leaden grey of the sky. She had reached the bridge over the mill- 
 race when she felt a Hght on her face and saw a figure approaching 
 her. Somebody was coming up the glen and the lantern he car- 
 ried was swinging by his side as he walked. 
 
 Then the instinct of self-preservation took possession of her. 
 Dizzy, dazed, breathing rapidly and trembling in every limb, she 
 crossed the bridge quickly, crept up to the door of the dwelling 
 house, stumbled upstairs to her room, tore off her outer garments, 
 dropped back on to her bed, and then fell (almost in a moment) 
 into the sleep of utter exhaustion. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Bridget Skillicorne had had a cow sick that night. It had been 
 suffering from a colic, probably due to grazing among the rank 
 grass which had been lying under the water that had been drained 
 away. But Bridget was sure that " that dirt Baldromma " had 
 " wutched " it (bewitched it) just to spite her for what she 
 had said. 
 
 She had tried a hot bran mash in vain. The cow still writhed 
 and roared, so nothing remained, if they were not to lose their 
 creature, but that Will should go to the Ballawhaine (a witch- 
 doctor who lived nine or ten miles away on the seaward side of the 
 Curragh) and get a charm to take off the witching. 
 
 Old Will, being a class-leader, was well aware that such 
 sorcery was the arts of Satan. But if the cow died it would make 
 a big hole in their stocking-purse to buy another, so his conscience 
 compounded with his pocket, and he agreed to go. 
 
206 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Aw well, a few good words will do no harm at all," he said, 
 and carrying his stable lantern he set out towards nine o'clock on 
 his long journey. 
 
 Then Bridget, taking another lantern, a half-knitted stocking 
 and a three-legged stool, went into the cow-house to sit up with her 
 cow and watch the progress of its malady. 
 
 Towards midnight the creature became easier, and, gathering 
 her legs under her, lay down to sleep. But Bridget remained three 
 hours longer in the close atmosphere of the cow-house, waiting for 
 old WUl but thinking of Dan, and making her needles go with a 
 furious click at the thought of his threat to evict her. 
 
 The upper half of the cow-house door stood open, and some- 
 where in the dark hours towards dawn she was startled by a bright 
 light and the hissing and crackling of a sudden fire outside. She 
 knew what it was (such fires on the mountains were not uncom- 
 mon), but nevertheless she stepped out to see. 
 
 She saw more than she had expected. In the glen below her 
 brew, where every bush and tree stood out for a moment in the 
 flare of the burning gorse, she saw the figure of a woman. The 
 woman was standing by the Clagh-ny-Dooiney. She had some- 
 thing white under her arm. After a moment she knelt, put her 
 parcel under the lip of the stone and then hurried away. 
 
 Who was she? In her present mood, with her mind running 
 on one subject, Bridget could have no uncertainty. It was the 
 Collister girl ! It must be ! What had she been doing down there.'' 
 In her own walk through life Bridget had never stepped aside, 
 therefore she was severe on those who had. There was only one 
 thing that could bring a girl out of bed in the middle of the night 
 to a place like that. The slut ! The strumpet ! 
 
 When Will Skillicorne reached home half-an-hour afterwards 
 he was carrying a wisp of straw. With this he was to make the 
 sign of the cross on the back of the sick cow, and say some good 
 words about St. Patrick and St. Bridget, giving it at the same 
 time a hot drink of meal and water. 
 
 " But the craythur is better these three hours," said Bridget. 
 
 " Praise the Lord ! " said Will. " That must have been the 
 very minute the good man came down from his bed to me in his 
 flannel drawers ! " 
 
 " But did thou meet anybody as thou was coming up the glen.' " 
 
 " Maybe I did." 
 
 " Was it a woman ? " 
 
 " It's like it was, now." 
 
 " Did she go into the miU-house? " 
 
THE SOUL OF EAQAR 207 
 
 " I believe in my heart she did, though." 
 
 Bridget was triumphant. 
 
 It was the CoUister girl ! There could not be a doubt about it. 
 And at break of day she would go down to the glen and see what 
 she had left under the Clagh-ny-Dooiney. 
 
 " Show me the road at Hollantide, will he? The dirt! The 
 dirty black toad! We'll see! We'll see! " 
 
 IV 
 
 Bessie's sleep of exhaustion deepened to delirium and for a 
 long day she lay in the grip of it. When she floated out of her 
 unconsciousness, she had a sense of confusion. A babel of 
 meaningless voices, like the many sound's of a wild night, were 
 clashing in her brain. A man and a woman were in her bedroom, 
 talking like somnambulists. 
 
 " Her feet have been bleeding. Where has she been, think 
 you? " 
 
 The man's voice must be that of Doctor Clucas, and then came 
 some vague answer in the woman's voice, with a thick snaffle and 
 a suppressed sob — her mother's. 
 
 Bessie heard no more. A cloud passed over her brain that was 
 like the rolling mist that alternately reveals and conceals a bell- 
 buoy at sea. When it cleared she heard a strange woman's voice 
 outside the house — her bedroom door hsid been left open that her 
 mother might hear her if she called. 
 
 " I didn't know thy daughter had come home, Liza Collister." 
 
 " And how dost thou know now, Bridget Skillicome? " 
 
 " How? There's someones coming will tell thee how, woman." 
 
 Bessie felt as if somebody had struck her in the face. Had 
 anything become known? Later she heard her atep-father speak- 
 ing in the kitchen. 
 
 " Is she herself yet." 
 
 " Not yet." 
 
 " Better she never should be." 
 
 " Sakes alive, man, what art thou saying? " 
 
 " I'm saying that old trollop on the brews is after finding 
 something under the Clagh-ny-T)ooiney and sending h^ man to 
 the police to fetch it." 
 
 " Fetch what? " 
 
 " Just a parcel in a sUk scarf with a lil arm sticking; out — 
 that's all, ma'am." 
 
 The doctor at the hospital had been holding a post-mortem, and 
 
208 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 now Cain, the constable, was to make a house to house visitation 
 of the parish to find the mother of the child. 
 
 Bessie covered her mouth to suppress a scream. But some- 
 thing whispered, " Hush ! Keep still ! They know nothing ! " 
 
 Early next day she was awakened by the sound of many men's 
 voices downstairs, and her mother's voice in angry protestation. 
 
 " I tell thee, I know nothing about it. The girl came home to 
 me three days ago, and I put her to bed, and she has never since 
 been out of it." 
 
 " They all say that, ma'am," said one of the men. It was 
 Cain, the constable. 
 
 A little later, while Bessie lay with closed eyes and her face to 
 the wall, she became aware of several persons in her bedroom, and 
 one of them leaning over her. She knew it was Cain — she could 
 hear his asthmatical breathing. 
 
 " Is she really unconscious, doctor? " 
 
 " Undoubtedly she is. You can leave her for a few days any- 
 way. She'll not run away, you see." 
 
 After that, listening intently, Bessie heard the constable rang- 
 ing the room as if examining everything. 
 
 " What's this ? " he asked. 
 
 Bessie drew a quick breath, but dared not look around. 
 
 " Only a remnant seemingly," said the doctor. 
 
 " We'll be taking it with us, though," said the constable, and 
 then the rolling mist of unconsciousness covered everything again. 
 
 When it passed Bessie knew that the police were suspecting 
 her. They thought they had found her out, and they were going 
 to bring the whole machinery of the law to punish her. What a 
 wicked thing the law was ! She had injured nobody — nobody that 
 anybody had ever seen in this world. She had only tried to save 
 somebody she loved from shame and pain. And yet the con- 
 stables, the courts and the coroners were all in a conspiracy to 
 crush one poor girl ! No matter ! She would deny everything. 
 
 Next day was Sunday. Bessie heard the church bells ringing 
 across the Curragh, and, before they stopped, the singing of a 
 hymn. The Primitives were holding a service at the corner of 
 the high road before going into their chapel. After the hymn 
 somebody prayed. It was Will Skillicorne. Bessie (listening 
 through her open skylight) recognised the high pitch of his preach- 
 ing voice. He would be standing on the chapel steps. 
 
 There was a great deal about " carnal transgression," about 
 " brands plucked from the burning," about " the judgments of the 
 Lord," and finally about the " conscious sinner," throwing herself 
 upon her Saviour and repenting of " the sin she had committed 
 
TEE SOUL OF BAGAR 209 
 
 against God." At the close of his prayer Will gave out the first 
 two lines of another hymn — 
 
 " I was a wandering sheep, 
 I did not love the fold." 
 
 Bessie knew whom all this was meant for. The Primitives 
 were torturing her. But they were torturing somebody else as well. 
 Through the singing and praying she heard her mother's sighs 
 downstairs, and the beating of her foot on the hearthstone, as she 
 sat by the fire and listened to the service for her guilty child. 
 
 What a cowardly thing religion was ! Sin ? What sin had she 
 committed.' She had never intended to do wrong, and only those 
 who had gone through it could know what she had suiFered. Any- 
 way, such as she was God had made her. She would admit noth- 
 ing. Nothing whatever. 
 
 Two days passed. Bessie's heart softened and became calm. 
 The police were leaving her alone — they must have given up that 
 nonsense about punishing her. Everything was going to turn out 
 as she had expected. 
 
 On the third day, her mother, coming into her bedroom, found 
 her with "widely-opened eyes and all her face a smile. Yes, she 
 was herself once more. In fact there had not been much amiss 
 with her. Only, never having been ill before, she had been fright- 
 ened and had come home to be nursed by her mother. But now she 
 was better and must soon go back .... back to where she 
 came from. 
 
 She told her mother about Alick and how fond he was of her — 
 parting from his father and sisters and even his mother for her 
 sake. It was quite a mistake to suppose that Alick had refused to 
 marry her. He would have married her long ago, and it was she 
 who had been holding back. Why? She wished to be strong 
 and well first. It wasn't fair to a man to let him marry a sick 
 wife — ^was it? 
 
 The old woman, with a broken face, looking sadly down at the 
 girl, said, " Yes, bogh ! It's like it isn't, bogh," and turned her 
 eyes away. 
 
 On the fourth day Bessie got out of bed and moved about the 
 room just to show how strong she was. 
 
 " See what a step I have now. I could walk miles and 
 miles, mother." 
 
 The moral of that was that she must go back to Derby Haven 
 without more delay. Alick was waiting for her and he would be 
 growing anxious. She must take the first train in the morning. 
 
 14 
 
210 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " It's rather early, but never mind about breakfast. A cup ot 
 tea and a piece of barley bonnag — ^that will do." 
 
 Late that night, when Mrs. Collister, going to bed with a heavy 
 heart, looked in to say good-night, Bessie asked to be called in 
 good time in the morning. 
 
 " Don't forget to waken me. I used to be the first up, you 
 know, but now I'm a sleepy-head." 
 
 And then she kissed her mother (never having kissed her since 
 she was a child) and the old woman's eyes overflowed. 
 
 Left alone, in the dark, she began to think how good God had 
 been to her after all. Only those who had sinned and suflFered 
 knew how good He could' be. She remembered the text abbut the 
 friend who, when all earthly friends forsake you, sticketh closer 
 than a brother. Also, with a certain shame, she recalled the hymn 
 the Primitives had sung on Sunday morning, and, covering her 
 head in the bedclothes, she sang two lines of it — 
 
 " But now I love my Father's voice, 
 I love my Father's home." 
 
 How happy she was ! At that time to-morrow she would be in 
 bed at Derby Haven, having seen Alick and arranged everything. 
 
 Next morning, when she awoke, she was startled to find the sim 
 pouring into the room. She knew by the line it miade on the wall 
 that the first train must have gone. The chickens, too, were 
 clucking at the kitchen door, and they never came round 
 before breakfast. 
 
 She had risen on her elbow intending to call, when she heard 
 the roll of a van-like vehicle drawing up in front of the house, 
 and immediately afterwards, a man's husky, asthmatical voice in 
 the kitchen, mingling with her mother's shrill treble. 
 
 " Go upstairs and tell her to make ready, ma'am." 
 
 " No, no; the girl's not fit for it, I tell thee." 
 
 " She's fit enough for the prison hospital, anyway." 
 
 " She has never been out of my door since she came into it." 
 
 " We'U lave that to the High Bailiff and the Dempster, if 
 you plaze." 
 
 Bessie, supporting herself on her trembling arm, could scarcely 
 restrain herself from screaming. One moment she sat and gasped, 
 and then, grasping her head with both hands, she turned about and 
 fell forward and buried her face in her pillow. 
 
 At the next moment she was conscious of somebody coming into 
 her room, and at the next, from somewhere at the foot of the bed. 
 
STOW ELL IN LONDON 211 
 
 she heard her mother say, in a strange voice she had never known 
 before — throbbing, choking, scarcely audible — 
 " They have come for thee, Bessie." 
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 
 
 STOWELL IN LONDON 
 
 Victor Stowell had been more than a week in London. For- 
 tune had favoured him from the first. The Home Secretary (a 
 tall, spare, elderly man, with a clean-shaven face of rather severe 
 expression) rose when Stowell entered his room as if a spirit had 
 appeared before him. " My youth again," the young man 
 thought, but it was a different matter this time. 
 
 " Has anybody ever told you that you resemble your father, 
 Mr. Stowell? " 
 
 It turned out that the old Deemster and the Home Secretary 
 (a barrister before he became a statesman) had been in chambers 
 together in the Middle Temple while reading for the bar, and that 
 the politician had never lost respect for the man who, in spite of 
 brilliant promise of success in England (he might have become 
 an English High Court Judge with six times his Manx salary), 
 had returned to the obscurity of his little island and the service 
 of his own people. 
 
 " You have high traditions to live up to, young man. 
 Sit down." 
 
 Then came the subject of the interview. The authorities had 
 satisfied themselves that on the score of legal capacity the Gover- 
 nor's recommendation was not unjustified. The only serious diffi- 
 culty was StoweU's youth. The principles on which the Crown 
 selected elderly and even old (sometimes very old) men for the 
 positions of Judges were simple and sound. First, seniority of 
 service, and next, maturity of character, so as to avoid the dangers 
 that come from the temptations, the trials, even iihe turbulent 
 emotions of early life, which might easily conflict with the calm 
 of the judicial office. Still, these principles could be too rigidly 
 followed — particularly in remote colonies and small dependencies 
 where the range of suitable selection was limited. 
 
 After this came a personal catechism, the old man looking at 
 the young one over the rims of his tortoise-shell spectacles. Mar- 
 ried.' Not yet Expect to be? Yes, Sir. Soon? Not, not for a 
 long time. How long? Six weeks at least. Sir. 
 
 The ends of the severe mouth rose perceptibly, and in any 
 other face they might have broken into a smile. 
 
212 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Daughter of the Governor, isn't she? Yes, but that isn't her 
 chief characteristic, Sir. What is? That she is the loveliest and 
 noblest vroman in the world. 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 Again the severe mouth relaxed, and the Home Secretary asked 
 Stowell vifhere he was staying. Stowell told him (the Inns of 
 Court Hotel, Holborn) and he made a note of it. 
 
 " Remain there until you hear from me again, Mr. Stowell, and 
 meantime say nothing about this interview to anybody." 
 
 " Not anybody whatever. Sir? " 
 
 The Home Secretary's stern old face became genial and charm- 
 ing as he rose and held out his hand. 
 
 " Well, that supreme being, perhaps .... Good day ! " 
 
 " So here I am, my dear Fenella," wrote Stowell, " back in the 
 bedroom of my hotel, telling you all about it. How long I may 
 have to remain in London, goodness knows, therefore I propose to 
 tell you something about my ways of life while I wait. 
 
 " Such a change in me ! When I was in London last (with 
 Alick Gell, you remember) I spent my days and nights in the 
 hotels, restaurants, theatres and music-halls that are the lovely 
 and beloved world of woman. It is the world of woman still, but 
 quite another realm of it. 
 
 " Two nights ago I strolled westward along Oxford Street, and 
 thought (with a lump in my throat) about De Quincey and his 
 Ann. Then, cutting through Clare Market to the Temple and 
 finding the gate closed, I lipped the porter to let me walk through 
 the Brick Court, and stood a long half hour before a house in the 
 silent little square, thinking of the day when the women of the town 
 sat on the stairs while poor NoU (Oliver Goldsmith) lay dead in 
 his rooms above. And then, coming out into Fleet-street (mid- 
 night now) where the big printing presses were throbbing behind 
 dark buildings, I tried to think I saw the great old Johnson, God 
 bless him, picking up the prostitute from the pavement, carrying 
 her home on his back and laying her on his bed. 
 
 " Last night I strolled eastward to look at the outside of the 
 Settlement in which you used to be Lady Warden (in the unbeliev- 
 able days before you came back to Man), and returning by a dark 
 side street, I came upon a queue of women crouching in the cold 
 before the doors of a Salvation Shelter. They were waiting for 
 four in the morning when they would have a iighting chance of 
 one of the beds (i.e., boxes like open coffins lying cheek by jowl 
 on the floor of a big hall) after the washerwomen who were then 
 asleep in them would get up and go to work. 
 
STOWSLL IN LONDON 213 
 
 " But the climax came this morning (Sunday morning) when I 
 went to service at the Foundling Hospital. Such a sweet scene — 
 at first sight at all events. The liLtle women, like little nuns, 
 in their linen caps and aprons, singing like little angels in their 
 sweet young voices. But my God, what tragedy lurked behind 
 that picture also ! 
 
 " I did not hear much of the sermon for thinking of the 
 mothers of these ' children of shame ' and the conditions under 
 which they must have given birth to them — sometimes in a garret, 
 in secret, alone, driven to dementia by a sense of impending shame. 
 How often a poor miserable girl in the degradation of childbirth 
 (which should be the crown of a woman's glory) must have been 
 tempted to kiU her child in fear of the fate that awaited both it 
 and her ! And to think of the giant arm of the mighty law coming 
 down on a creature like that to punish her ! Lord, what crimes are 
 committed in the name of Justice ! 
 
 "There you are now! That's what you've done for me. 
 'Deed you have though. It's truth enough, girl. You've opened 
 my ears to the cry of the voice of suffering woman, and that is the 
 saddest sound, perhaps, that breaks on the shores of life. And 
 the moral of it all is that if I do become a Judge (God knows I'm 
 almost afraid to hope for it) you must be my helper, my inspirer, 
 the tower of my strength. 
 
 " Oh, my darling, how much I love you ! It seems to me that 
 I lost all my life until I came to love you. How well I recall the 
 blessed day when I loved you first ! It was the first time I saw 
 you — ^the first time really. Don't you remember? In the glen, 
 that glorious autumn afternoon. The vision has followed me ever 
 since and I wish I could blot out every day of my life when I 
 have not thought of you. 
 
 " There you are again ! You see what you've done, ma'am. 
 But I'm not always on the heights. What do you think? I've 
 bought a motor car, and every morning I go up to Hampstead 
 with a teacher to learn to drive. 
 
 " It is for our honeymoon. You called me a Viking once, and 
 I'm not going to be a Viking for nothing. As soon as you are 
 mine, mine wholly, I am going to pick you up and carry you oif 
 to all the inaccessible places in the island — the bent-strewn plains 
 of Ayre, where a lighthouse-man lives alone with his wife and 
 nothing else save the sea for company ; the shepherd's hut on Snae- 
 fell, where there is nothing but the sky, and the sandy headlands 
 of the Calf with the mists of the Atlantic sweeping over them. 
 
 " Meantime, think of me in a box of a bedroom five storeys up, 
 with the roaring tide of London traffic running, like a Canadian 
 
214 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 river, sixty feet below, and write — write, write ! Tell me what is 
 happening in the ' Ul islan' ' which is lying asleep to-night in the 
 Irish Sea. God' bless it, and all the kind and cheery souls in it ! 
 God bless it for evermore! 
 
 " Stowell." 
 
 II 
 
 " My DEAR Victor, — You cannot imagine what a joy your let- 
 ter was. Do you know it was my iirst love-letter.'' Of course I 
 behaved like a dairymaid — ^took it up to bed, put it on my pillow 
 and said, ' You are Victor, you know,' and laid my cheek on it. 
 
 " Whatever have you done to make me so foolish.'' Was it only 
 half of you (the physical half) that went away, leaving the spirit 
 half with me } I want the other half, though, the substantial half, 
 so tell your Home Secretary (I like him) to hurry up and send 
 you home. 
 
 " You do wrong not to see the beautiful women, dear. The 
 woman who is afraid of her husband looking at other women is 
 building her house on the sand. I should like to say to myself, 
 ' He has seen the loveliest women in the world, yet he comes 
 back to me.' 
 
 " All the same I love you for looking at the darker side of 
 woman's life. It is more apparent in the greater communities, 
 but it is here, too, and that is why I am looking eagerly forward to 
 your appointment as Deemster, which will make you a creator 
 of the law as well as an administrator of it. You must have no 
 misgivings, though. Why should you? A man who has a stain- 
 less scutcheon is just what women want for their champion. And 
 if I may help you how happy I shall be ! 
 
 " You ask what is happening in the island. Well, apart from 
 politics (of which I know nothing except that they seem to be 
 always the same story) the only thing of consequence is the case of 
 a young woman charged with the murder of her illegitimate child. 
 
 " She is a country girl who, having run away from home some 
 months ago, returned recently very ill and was put to bed, and 
 remained there until arrested. But in the meantime the body of 
 a new-born infant was found under a large stone half a mile 
 away, and it is said to have been hers. 
 
 " She denies all knowledge of the child, but the medical testi- 
 mony seems to be sadly against her, and there is some direct 
 evidence also, though it is not above the suspicion of being tainted 
 by malice. 
 
 " She has been up before the High Bailiff and committed to the 
 next sitting of the General GaxA Delivery, so you are likely to hear 
 
8T0WELL IN LONDON 215 
 
 more of the ease. Poor thing, whatever her sin, she has already 
 had a fearful punishment, for she is very ill, having apparently 
 exposed herself to dreadful sufferings in the hope of preventing 
 her baby from being born alive. 
 
 " She is now in the prison hospital, and this morning I drove 
 over to see her. A good-looking girl, almost beautiful (with the 
 sort of beauty which attracts the less worthy side of a certain type 
 of man), but her cheeks are now terribly thin and pale, and her 
 big black eyes (her finest feature) have that wild look which one 
 sees in a captured animal that gazes and gazes. 
 
 " I liked the girl, but she did not seem to like me. In fact she 
 shrank from me (the only girl who ever did so) and when I tried 
 to be nice to her, and asked her to trust me, and to tell me who 
 was responsible for her condition, so that I might find him and 
 fetch him to her, she broke into a flood of fierce denial. 
 
 " Either the girl is a great story-teller or she is a great heroine, 
 and I am half inclined to think she may be both. My guess would 
 be that she is trying to shield the guilty man. The clothes she 
 had worn were better than a farm girl could afford to buy, and that 
 suggests that her fellow-sinner belongs to a class above her. 
 
 " Isn't it shocking that the law provides no punishment for the 
 man who ruins a girl's life — ruining her soul at the same time, for 
 that is what it often comes to. But, please God, you will be on the 
 bench, so she is sure to have justice. 
 
 " Our Society has decided to undertake her defence, but we are 
 at a loss whom to employ. We cannot afford a high fee either — 
 ten or fifteen guineas at the outside. Can you suggest anybody.? 
 
 " I intend to be present at the trial, and to stand by the girl's 
 side, for she will have nobody else, poor creature. But oh, how I 
 wish I might plead for her ! Although her fellow-sinner will not 
 stand for judgment, how I shovdd like to tear the mask from his 
 face and cry in open court, ' Thou art the man! ' 
 
 " Good-night, dear! It's 10 p.m., and such delicious dreams 
 are waiting for me upstairs. Bring your motor-car back, and 
 when the time comes (I shall not keep you long) you may carry 
 me off to wherever you please. 
 
 " Listen, I am going to say something. There is not much in 
 the heart of a woman that you don't know already, but I am about 
 to let you into a secret. The woman who does not want her hus- 
 band (if only he loves her) to control her, command her, and do 
 anything and everything he likes with her, isn't really a woman at 
 all — she's only a mistake for a man! 
 
 " Victor, after that burst of nonsense I cannot conclude with- 
 out telling you again how much I love you. I love you for your- 
 
216 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 self, just yourself alone, quite apart from anything you may do or 
 have done, whether good or bad, right or wrong, and I shall go 
 on loving you whatever may happen to you in the future, whether 
 you become Deemster or not, go up or go down. 
 
 " But when I think of the life that is so surely before you, and 
 that I shall walk through it by your side, perfectly imited with 
 you, sharing the same hopes and aims and desires, enjoying the 
 same sunshine and weathering the same storms, I have a vision of 
 happiness that makes me cry for joy. 
 
 " Come back to me soon, dearest. The spring is here in all her 
 youthful beauty; the daffodils are nodding; the gorse on the hedges 
 is a blaze of gold; tlie sky is blue; the sea is lying asleep under a 
 divine shimmer of sunshine, and your island — your island that is 
 going to be so proud of you — is waiting to clasp you to her heart. 
 
 " And so am I, my Victor ! 
 
 " Fenella." 
 
 ni 
 
 " My own dear Fenella, — I am so troubled about the young 
 woman who is to be charged with the murder of her child that 
 (time being short) I must write at once on the subject. It looks 
 like a case of the temporary mania which so often prom.pts women 
 to take life (their own or their children's) in the hope of avoid- 
 ing shame. 
 
 " God, when I think of it, that in all ages of the world tens of 
 thousands of women have gone through that fiery furnace and that 
 never one man since the days of Adam has come within sight of it, 
 I want to go down on my knees to the meanest and lowest of them 
 as the martyrs of humanity. 
 
 " Infanticide is of course a serious crime in any country, and 
 especially serious in the Isle of Mim now, when the Governor has 
 made up his mind to show no mercy to persons guilty of fatal 
 violence. But the killing of a new-born child is usually treated as 
 felonious homicide. Therefore, if you carry out your intention of 
 standing by the girl's side, you may safely tell her (in order to 
 save her from possible shock) that even a verdict of guilty will 
 not mean death. 
 
 " How I wish you could plead for the poor thing ! But instruct 
 counsel for the defence and you will really be pleading, and I, 
 for one, if I am present, will hear your quivering voice in every 
 word he says. 
 
 " As for the choice of an Advocate — ^why not Alick Gell ? He 
 has not had too many chances, poor chap, and it will hearten him 
 
8T0WELL IN LONDON 217 
 
 (he was rather down when I saw him last) to be entrusted with a 
 serious case like this. 
 
 " Tell him to look up Galabin and Murrell on Forensic Medi- 
 cine — he'll find both in the Law Library. The first step is to make 
 sure that the poor creature (I assume she is not too well educated) 
 has not mistaken infanticide for concealment; and the next, to 
 insist on proof of ' a live birth/ which it is practically impossible 
 to establish (except on the girl's confession) in a case of soli- 
 tary delivery. 
 
 " Yes, you are almost certainly right in thinking she is trying 
 to shield the guilty man, and, criminal though she is, she may be 
 (as you say) an absolute heroine. In that event I trust it may not 
 fall to my lot to try her. God save me from sitting in judgment 
 on a woman who stands silent in her shame to shield the honour 
 of the man she loves ! 
 
 " But as for hunting down the guilty man, that (don't you 
 think so.'') is perhaps another matter. If it has to be done at all 
 it is only a woman — a pure and stainless woman — ^who has a right 
 to do it. No man who knows himself, and how near every mother's 
 son of us has been to the verge of the pit, will be the first to throw 
 a stone. You remember — ' But for the grace of God there goes 
 John Wesley.' Oh, my darling, how can I ever be grateful enough 
 for what you have done for me .... 
 
 ******* 
 
 " Helloa! The page boy has just been up with a letter from 
 the Home Secretary. ' I have the pleasure to inform you that 
 the King has been pleased to approve of your appointment to the 
 position of the Deemster of the Isle of Man . . . . ' 
 
 " How glorious ! Here I have been all day saying to myself, 
 ' Wlio, in God's name, are you that you should be Judge over 
 anybody? ' and now I'm glad — damned glad, there is no other 
 word for it. 
 
 " I shall telegraph the news to you in a few minutes, but I feel 
 as if I want to take the first boat home and become my own mes- 
 senger. That is impossible, for I have to call on the Lord Chan- 
 cellor to-morrow about my Commission. And then I have to see 
 to the transport of my car, and the purchase of my Judge's wig 
 and gown. But wait, only wait! Three days more I shall have 
 you in my arms. 
 
 " My respectful greetings to the Governor. Say I know how 
 much I owe to him for this unprecedented appointment. Say, 
 too, I shall hold myself in readiness for the ceremony of the 
 swearing-iri, whenever he desires it to take place; also for the 
 
218 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 next C!ourt of General Gaol Delivery if Deemster Taubman is still 
 down with his rheumatism. 
 
 " And now bless you again^ dearest, for all your beautiful faith 
 in me. God helping me, I'll do my best to deserve it. But you 
 must be my guardian watcher, my sentinel, my star. 
 
 " What a dear old world it is, darling ! It seems as if there 
 ought to be no suffering of any kind in it now — now that the sky 
 is so bright for you and me. 
 
 " Victor." 
 
 " P.S. Important. Don't forget to employ GeU in that case 
 of the girl who killed her baby. Alick's her man. Mind you, 
 though — he must compel her to tell him everything." 
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 
 
 ALICK GELL 
 
 For ten days Alick GeU had been searching for Bessie Col- 
 lister. When he first read her letter on reaching Derby Haven (he 
 read it a hundred times afterwards) he remembered something his 
 father had said in taunting him — " You'll not be the first by a long 
 way ! " Then he recalled the case of the Peel fisherman and a 
 black thought came hurtling down on him. At the next moment 
 he hated himself for it. 
 
 "What devil out of hell made me think of that?" he 
 asked himself. 
 
 But why had Bessie run away from him.'' The only explana- 
 tion he could find was the one Stowell had given on the steamboat — 
 women had illnesses which men knew nothing about, and in the 
 throes of their mania they sometimes hid themselves, like sick 
 animals, from their friends — most of all from those they loved. 
 Were not the newspapers full of such cases ? 
 
 " That's it ! That's it ! My poor girl ! " 
 ' Having arrived at this explanation of Bessie's flight, he had no 
 compunction about going in search of her. Her malady might be 
 only temporary, but, while it lasted. Heaven alone knew what 
 dangers she might expose herself to. 
 
 At first it occurred to him to call in the assistance of the police. 
 But no, that would lead to publicity, and publicity to misunder- 
 standing. Bessie would get better ; he must keep her name clear 
 of scandal. His voice shook and his lip trembled as he told the 
 Misses Brown to say nothing to anybody. His warning was un- 
 necessary. The terrified old maids, who had at length begun to 
 scent the truth, had decided to keep their own counsel. 
 
ALICK GELL 219 
 
 Within half an hotir Alick was on the road. He had no doubt 
 of overtaking Bessie — ^she was only half an hour gone. But 
 which way would she go? It was easier to say which way she 
 would not go. She would not go to the north of the island where 
 she would be known to nearly everybody. Above all, she would 
 not go home — the home of Dan Baldromma. 
 
 AU that day he wandered through Castletown — every street and 
 alley. At nightfall he was back at Derby Haven. Had Bessie 
 returned.? No! Had anything been heard of her? Nothing! 
 
 Next day he set out on a wider journey — all the towns and 
 villages of the south, Port St. Mary, Port Erin, Fleswick, Balla- 
 salla, Colby, Ballabeg and Cregneash. He walked from daylight 
 to dark, and asked no questions, but at every open door he paused 
 and listened. When he saw a farm-house that stood back from 
 the high road he made excuse to go up to it — a drink of milk 
 or water. 
 
 Day followed day without result. His heart was sinking. More 
 than once he met somebody whom he knew and had to make excuse 
 for his rambling. Wonderful what a walking tour did to blow the 
 cobwebs from a fellow's brain after he had been shut up too long 
 in an office ! His friends looked after him with a strange expres- 
 sion. He had been something of a dandy, but his hair was 
 imcombed and his linen was becoming soiled and even dirty. 
 
 At length he became a prey to illusions. He always slept in 
 the last house he came to, and one night, in a fisherman's cottage 
 near Fleswick, he was awakened by the wind blowing over the 
 thatch. He thought it sounded like the voice of Bessie, and that 
 she was wandering over the highway in the darkness, alone 
 and distraught. 
 
 Next day he began to inquire if anything had been seen of such 
 a person. He was told of a young woman who, found walking 
 barefoot on the lonely road to Dreamlang, had been taken to the 
 asylum, and he hurried there to inquire. No, it was not Bessie. 
 Some poor young wife who (only six months married and begin- 
 ning to be happy in the prospect of a child) had lost her husband 
 in an accident at the mines at Foxdale. 
 
 The dread of suicide took hold of him. One day a fish-cadger 
 on the road told him that a young woman's body had been washed 
 ashore at Peel. Again it was nothing — nothing to him. The 
 wife of the captain of a Norwegian schooner which had been 
 wrecked off Contrary — ^with her eyes open and her baby locked 
 in her rigid arms. 
 
 Alick's heart was failing him. Do what he would to keep 
 down evil thoughts they were getting the better of him. Some- 
 
22(1 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 times he rested on the seat that usually stands outside the white- 
 washed porch of a Manx cottage, and although he thought he said 
 so little he found that the women especially such of them as 
 were mothers of grown-up girls) seemed to divine the object of 
 his journey. 
 
 " Aw, yes, that's the way with them, the boghs, especially when 
 there's a man bothering them. Was there any man, now . . . . " 
 
 But Alick was up and gone before they could finish their 
 question. 
 
 Thus ten days passed. Absorbed in his search, perplexed and 
 tortured, he had seen no newspaper and heard nothing of what 
 was happening in the island. Suddenly it occurred to him that 
 Bessie could not have left him so long without news of her. She 
 could not be so cruel; she must have written, and her letter must 
 be lying at his office. 
 
 People who knew him, and saw him return to Douglas, could 
 scarcely recognise him in the pale, unwashed, unshaven man who 
 climbed the steps from the station, looking like a drunkard who 
 had been sleeping out in the fields. 
 
 His chambers, when he turned the key (he had no clerk now), 
 were stuffy and cheerless. The ashes of his last fire were on the 
 hearth, and his desk was covered with dust. Behind the door (he 
 had no letter-box) a number of circulars and bills lay on the 
 ground, but, running his trembling fingers through them, he found 
 no letter from Bessie. 
 
 There was a large and bulky envelope, though, with the seal of 
 Government House, and marked " Immediate." What could it 
 be ? On the top of a thick body of folio paper he found a letter. 
 It was from Fenella Stanley. 
 
 " Dear Mr. Gell, — At the suggestion of Mr. StoweU, 
 who is still in London, I am writing on behalf of the 
 Women's Protection League, to ask you if you can undertake 
 the defence of the young woman in the north of the island 
 who is to be charged with the murder of her new-born child." 
 
 Alick paused a moment to draw breath. 
 
 " You will see by the report of the High Bailiff's inquiry 
 and the copy of the Depositions which I enclose that the 
 girl denies everything, and that her mother supports her, 
 but the evidence is only too sadly against her — particularly 
 that of the doctors and of two neighbours who live higher 
 up the glen." 
 
ALIOK QELL 221 
 
 Alick felt his heart stop and his whole body grew cold. 
 
 " Her step-father . . . . " 
 The letter almost dropped from his fingers. 
 
 " Her step-father has not been asked by the prosecution 
 to depose, and it is doubtful if the defence ought to call him." 
 
 He was becoming dizzy. The lines of the letter were running 
 into each other. 
 
 " Innocent or guilty, the girl has suffered terribly. She 
 has been several days in hospital at Ramsey, but she was 
 to be removed to Castle Rushen this morning. Her case is 
 to come on next week at the Court of General Gaol Delivery, 
 so perhaps you will send me a telegram immediately saying 
 if you can take up the defence. 
 
 " As you see the poor creature is herself an illegitimate 
 child — the name by which she is commonly known being 
 Bessie Collister." 
 
 Alick shrieked. He had seen the blow coming, but when it 
 came it fell on him like a thunderbolt. 
 
 It was all a lie — a damned lie ! Nobody would make him be- 
 lieve it. Bessie arrested for the murder of her child! She had 
 never had a child. 
 
 He leapt to his feet and tramped the room on stiffened limbs 
 and with a heart throbbing with anger. Then, half afraid, but 
 doing his best to compose himself, he took the report and the 
 Depositions out of the big envelope, and, sitting before the dead 
 hearth with his shaking feet on the fender, and holding the folio 
 pages in his dead-cold hands, he read the evidence. 
 
 As he did so he shrieked again, but this time with laughter. 
 What a tissue of manifest lies ! The Skillicornes and their quarrel 
 with Dan Baldromma — what a malicious conspiracy ! Lord, what 
 blind fools the police could be ! And the Attorney, had he come to 
 his second childhood .'' 
 
 Again and again Alick thumped the desk with his fist and filled 
 the air of the room with the dust that rose in the sunshine which 
 was now pouring through the windows. 
 
 There was a photograph of Bessie on the mantelpiece — a copy 
 of the same that she had sent to Stowell. He snatched it up and 
 kissed it. Never had Bessie been so dear to him as now — now 
 when she was in prison under a false accusation. And the best 
 of it was that he was to get her off. He must see her at 
 once, though. 
 
222 THE MASTER OF MAS 
 
 " My poor girl ! In Castle Rushen ! " 
 
 The first thing to do was to wash and change (he cut himself 
 badly in shaving), but in less than half-an-hour he was at the 
 Post-office telegraphing to Fenella. 
 
 " Gladly." 
 
 Brief as the message was, the clerk at the counter could hardly 
 decipher the agitated handwriting. 
 
 A few minutes later he was at the Police-office, asking the Chief 
 Constable for an order to allow him, as Bessie's advocate, to see 
 her alone in her cell. 
 
 At two o'clock he was back at the railway-station, taking the 
 train for Castletown. As he stepped into his carriage the news- 
 boys were calling tihe contents of the evening paper: 
 
 Victor Storvell appointed Deemster. 
 
 Glorious ! Bessie would have a hum^n being on the bench. 
 Thank God for that anyway ! 
 
 II 
 
 " I don't know what you are talking about — I really don't. 
 You make me laugh. Whatever will you say next! I was ill and 
 I came home to have my mother nurse me, and that was all I knew 
 until Cain, the constable, came to bring me here." 
 
 It was Bessie before the High Bailiff. Her face was thin and 
 pale, and she was clutching the rail of the dock in an effort to keep 
 herself erect, while her shrill voice echoed to the roof. 
 
 The magistrate was about to commit her to prison when Dr. 
 Clucas rose in the body of the Court-house. 
 
 " Your worship," he said (his voice was husky and his eyes had 
 a look of tears), " the defendant is suffering from the temporary 
 mania which is not unusual in such cases. I suggest that she 
 should be sent to the hospital." 
 
 Bessie fainted. The next thing she knew was that she was in 
 bed in a hospital ward, and that another doctor (a younger man 
 with thin hair and a large pugnacious mouth) was leaning over her, 
 and laying his hand on her breast. She pushed it off, and then he 
 said, in an authoritative tone, 
 
 " My good woman, if you are innocent, as you say, the best 
 proof you can give is that of a medical examination." 
 
 At this Bessie broke into fierce wrath. 
 
 " If yon touch me again," she cried, " I'll tear your eyes out ! " 
 
 Then she fainted once more, and for two days lay in a strong 
 delirium. When she came to herself a nurse with a kind face was 
 
ALIOK GELL 223 
 
 by her side, saying " Hush! " and doing something at her breast 
 with a glass instrument. 
 
 She knew she had been delirious (having a vague memory of 
 crying "Alick! Alick! " as she returned to consciousness) and 
 was in fear of what she might have said. 
 
 " Is it morning? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes, dear." 
 
 " Then it's the next day? " 
 
 " The next but one." 
 
 " Have I been wandering? " 
 
 " A little." 
 
 " Did I call for anybody? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 She dare not ask whom, but lay wondering if Alick knew where 
 she was and what had happened to her. After a while she said, 
 
 " Is it in the papery? " 
 
 The nurse nodded, and after a moment, with her eyes down, 
 Bessie said, 
 
 " Has anybody been here to ask for me? " 
 
 " Yes, your mother — she comes night and morning." 
 
 " Nobody else ? " 
 
 " Nobody." 
 
 Bessie broke into sobs and turned her face to the wall. Alick 
 knew ! He had given her up ! She had lost him ! 
 
 When she recovered from an agony of tears her eyes were glit- 
 tering and her heart was bitter. What did she care what became 
 of her now? They might do what they liked with her. Deny? 
 What was the good ? She would deny no longer. She wotdd tell 
 the truth about everything. 
 
 Then Fenella Stanley came. Bessie thought she liked Miss 
 Stanley better than any woman, except her mother, she had ever 
 known. But that only made it the harder to hold to her resolution, 
 for if she told the truth she would surply hurt Fenella. " Oh, why 
 do you come to torture me? " she cried^ when Fenella asked who 
 was her " friend." And not another word would she say. 
 
 Two days later, before breakfast, Cain, the constable, came 
 with a sergeant of police to take her to Castle Rushen. She did 
 not care ! Why should she ? But as she was leaving the hospital 
 the nurse with the kind face whispered, 
 
 " Good-bye, dear. You're all right now. I'm going away and 
 will say nothing." 
 
 It was a cruelly beautiful morning, with a golden shimmer from 
 the rising sun upon a tranquil sea. The railway station was full 
 
224 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 of townspeople going up to Douglas (it was market day there), 
 so Bessie was hurried into the last compartment. 
 
 When the train ran into the country a flood of memories swept 
 over her and she found it hard to keep back her tears. The young 
 lambs were skipping on the hill-sides; the sheep were bleating; 
 girls in sun bonnets were coming from the whitewashed outhouses 
 to drive the cattle into the fields. 
 
 When they drew up at the station for the glen the shingly 
 platform was crowded with passengers waiting for the train — 
 rosy-faced women with broad open baskets of butter and eggs, and 
 elderly farmers smoking their strong thick twist and surrounded 
 by their panting dogs. Bessie knew them all. At the last moment 
 a young woman in a low cut blouse ran up — it was Susie Stephen. 
 
 Bessie crept into a corner of the carriage and closed her eyes. 
 But she could not shut out everything. Over the rumble of the 
 wheels, when the train started again, she heard shrieks of laughter 
 from the compartment in front. The elderly men were jesting 
 in their free way with the girls, and the girls, nothing loth, were 
 answering them back. 
 
 At the junction of St. John's, the train had to stop for car- 
 riages from Peel to be linked on to it, and while the coupling was 
 going on one of the passengers strolled along the platform. It 
 was Willie Teare, who had wanted to marry Bessie, and he saw her 
 behind the constables. At the next moment a throng of girls 
 gathered outside her window, but the constables pulled down 
 the blinds. 
 
 " Take your seats ! Take your seats ! " 
 
 The train went on. There was no more laughter from the 
 passengers in the compartment in front. Bessie understood — 
 they were whispering about her. 
 
 Her heart was becoming hard. Sitting in the darkened car- 
 riage, with spears of sunlight flashing from the flapping blinds, 
 she heard the constables talking about Mr. Stowell. It was re- 
 ported that he had been made Deemster. He would make a good 
 Deemster, too. 
 
 " A taste young, maybe, but clever — clever uncommon." 
 
 On reaching Douglas, where they had to change into the train 
 for Castletown, Bessie was being hustled across the platform, 
 between the constables, when she became aware of a crowd of 
 women and girls who were crushing up to stare at her. There was 
 a whispering and muttering. 
 
 " There she is ! " " Serve her right, / say! " 
 
 Half-an-hour later she was in Castle Rushen. The darkness 
 within was blinding after the sunshine without. A woman with 
 
ALICK GELL 225 
 
 short and difficult breathing was moving about her. It was Mrs. 
 Mylrea, the female warder. She took off Bessie's cloak and hat, 
 and, leaving her a brown blanket and a hard pillow, went away 
 without speaking a word. 
 
 But then came Vondy, the head jailer, with words enough for 
 both of them. Bessie did not know she was crying until the old 
 man, in his blundering way, began to comfort her. 
 
 "Tut, tut, gel! They're not for hanging you yet at all. 
 While there's life there's hope ! " 
 
 Left alone at last, and her eyes accustomed to the darkness, she 
 saw where she was — in a stone vault that had a small grill in the 
 door (behind which a candle was burning) and a barred and 
 deeply-recessed window, near the ceiling, through which a dull ray 
 of borrowed light was coming, for the prison overlooked the har- 
 bour on the west of the Castle. 
 
 By this time her tears were turned to gall. A frightful revul- 
 sion had come over her soul. What had she done to deserve all this ? 
 The injustice of it, the cruelty, the barbarity, the hypocrisy ! 
 
 Men were all alike. Go on, she knew what men were ! A man 
 only wanted one thing of a girl, and when he got that he forgot all 
 about her. Alick Gall was the best of them, yet even he had for- 
 saken her now that she was in trouble. 
 
 She had never intended to do harm to anybody, and yet there 
 she was, and would remain, until they came to take her to the 
 Court-house on the other side of the Castle-yard. Then hundreds 
 of eyes would be on her (women's eyes too) and when she raised 
 her own she would see Mr. Stowell on the bench. 
 
 What a mockery ! Mr. Stowell her judge ! What would he do? 
 His " duty " of course. All right, let him do it ! Only she, too, 
 would do something. After he had tried her and sentenced her 
 and finished with her, she would tell him something. Why shouldn't 
 she? And what did she care what happened to anybody else? 
 Fenella Stanley was nothing to her. 
 
 Suddenly she thought again about Alick Gell. If she did what 
 she intended to do (tell everything) Alick also would be disgraced. 
 The shame of her misfortune would follow him to the last day of 
 his life. Even his own father would cast it up to him. Hadn't 
 she done enough harm to Alick already ? If he had deserted her, 
 she had deceived him. And yet she had deceived him only because 
 she loved him. 
 
 "Alick! Alick! Alick!" 
 
 Her heart was crying. She was wishing she were dead. 
 
 She had flung herself down on her plank bed, with her face to 
 15 
 
226 THE UABTEB OF MAN 
 
 the blank wall, when she heard the dead beating of footsteps in the 
 corridor outside. At the next moment the door of her cell was 
 opened and Tommy Vondy, the j ailer, was saying, 
 
 " Mr. Alexander Gell, the advocate, to see you alone." 
 
 Ill 
 
 "Bessie!" 
 
 The j ailer had gone. Alick was breathing quickly in the dark- 
 ness by the door, and Bessie was huddled up on the bed, with the 
 dull ray of reflected light upon her from the wall above. 
 
 "Bessie!" 
 
 His voice was low and full of tears. At first she did not answer. 
 
 " It's Alick. Won't you speak to me? '" 
 
 " Go away ! " 
 
 He could hear that she was crying. 
 
 " You won't send me away, Bessie. I have been looking for 
 you all over the island. It was only to-day I heard where you 
 were and what had happened. I have come to help you — to 
 save you." 
 
 He saw the dark form rising on the bed. 
 
 " Do you know what they say I did? " 
 
 " Yes, I know everything." 
 
 " And you don't believe it? " 
 
 " Not one word of it." 
 
 " You think I am innocent? " 
 
 " I am sure you are." 
 
 "Alick!" 
 
 With a great sob that shook her whole body she rose to her feet 
 and flung herself upon him. For a long time they stood clasped 
 in each other's arms, and crying like children. Then they sat 
 down side by side on the plank bed. His arm was about her, and 
 her head was on his shoulder. 
 
 He was trying to make his voice cheerful, though it cracked 
 sorely, while he reproved her for her tears. She would soon be 
 free to leave that place. There was really nothing against her. 
 Never had there been such a trumped-up case. The police must 
 be crazy. 
 
 She clung to him with a frightened tenderness while he told her 
 of the letter from Fenella Stanley asking him to take up the 
 defence on behalf of the Society. 
 
 " Of course I should have taken it up in any case, you know. 
 And now you must authorise me to defend you." 
 
ALICK GELL 227 
 
 S'he was startled. In the half darkness he saw her pale face 
 (so pale and so thin) raised to his with a frightened look. 
 
 "Yon?" 
 
 " Wliy not, dear? I'm an advocate. You don't suppose I'm 
 going to leave your defence to anybody else, do you? " 
 
 " No, no ! You must not ! " 
 
 " But why? Can't you trust me, Bess? " 
 
 " It isn't that." 
 
 "What then?" 
 
 Bessie did not answer him, and he went on talking, though his 
 voice was breaking again. He knew he was not a born lawyer and 
 a great speaker like Stowell, but the facts were so clear that he 
 had only to state them and they would speak for themselves. 
 
 A fierce struggle was going on in Bessie's soul. He whom she 
 had wronged (never having wronged anybody else), he for whom 
 she had committed her crime, wanted her to authorise him to stand 
 up in Court and say she had not committed it. She had deceived 
 him once — could she deceive him again ? 
 
 " No, no, no ! I cannot ! " 
 
 Alick was puzzled. " What do you mean, Bessie? Why 
 shouldn't I be your advocate ? " 
 
 " I don't want any advocate." 
 
 " But yon must have one. It isn't enough to be not guilty — 
 we must prove you're not. Why shouldn't I do so ? " 
 
 At length she was forced to make some explanation. The police 
 were determined to have her condemned; therefore he woiild lose 
 his case and that would go against him. 
 
 " Good gracious, girl, what nonsense ! Anybody may lose a 
 case. The greatest lawyers have lost cases. But it's impossible 
 that I should lose this one. And even if I lose it — do you know 
 what I shaU do? " 
 
 " What? " 
 
 " Wait outside the prison door until you come out and marry 
 you the same day to show that I believe in you still." 
 
 At that Bessie was in floods of tears again. And again they 
 cried in eadh other's arms like- children. 
 
 Then Alick, after drying his eyes in the darkness, put on a 
 brave air, and told her what she had to do. 
 
 " Listen to me now. This is a low conspiracy, but if we are to 
 defeat it, you must stick to your story. I shall have to put you 
 in the box, for you must leave the Court without a stain on your 
 character. First of all you must say . . . . " 
 
 And then sitting by Bessie's side in the dark cell, with only the 
 candle looking in on them from the outside ledge of the grill, he 
 
228 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 rehearsed the facts as they were to be given in Court — how by the 
 cruelty of her step-father she had been shut out of the house late 
 at night and had had to go elsewhere ; how she had returned^ being 
 unwellj and wishing her mother to nurse her, and how she had been 
 put to bed and had never left it until the constables came to take 
 her away. 
 
 Bessie listened in silence, gazing before her like a captured 
 sheep, and answering only by a nodding of her head. 
 
 " If the Attorney asks you anything else — ^no matter what — 
 you must say you know nothing about it — -do you understand.^ " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Say it after me then—' I know nothing about it.' " 
 
 Bessie repeated the words like a woman talking in her sleep- — 
 " ' I know nothing about it.' " 
 
 " That's all right. Leave the rest to me." 
 
 " You think I shall get off.' " 
 
 " I'm sure of it. If the General Gaol is held next week, we'll 
 be married the week after." 
 
 " But, Alick? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Your father and sisters, will they not always cast it up at 
 you that your wife has been tried for . . . . " 
 
 " Let them ! If they do the Isle of Man will be dead to me for 
 ever. We'll go abroad — to America perhaps — and leave every- 
 thing and everybody behind us." 
 
 Bessie was crying once more, and Alick, to conceal his own 
 tears, was going off with great bustle. 
 
 " Good-bye ! I'll be here again to-morrow. And oh, what do 
 you think, Bess ? Great news ! Stowell has been made Deemster. 
 So if the good Lord in Heaven will only keep that damned old 
 Taubman in bed a little longer with his rheumatism, Stowell will be 
 on the bench and you'll have a fair trial at all events. Good-bye ! " 
 
 For the next half -hour Bessie sobbed with joy. Tell the truth 
 and destroy Alick's faith in her.'' Never ! Never in this world! 
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 
 
 THE deemster's OATH 
 
 It was the morning of the day of the swearing-in of the new 
 Deemster at Castle Rushen. The Bishop had asked permission to 
 solemnise the ceremony with a religious service — a custom 
 long unobserved. 
 
 The service was held in a groined chamber of moderate size 
 
THE DEEMSTER'S OATH 229 
 
 within walls thirty feet thick, once the banqueting-hall of the 
 Kings of Man, now the jail chapel, with an atmosphere that 
 seemed to be compounded equally of the intoxicated laughter of the 
 old revellers and the moans of the condemned prisoners. 
 
 For the event of the day the chill place had been suitably 
 decorated. Flags hung on the tarred walls, red cushions from the 
 neighbouring church had been laid on the bare benches; a carpet 
 had been stretched down the aisle of the ilagged floor; a white 
 embroidered altar-cloth covered the plain communion table, from 
 which the light of four candles in silver candlesticks flickered on 
 the faces of the small congregation — chiefly officials, with their 
 wives and daughters. 
 
 Shortly before eleven, the hour fixed for the service, Stowell 
 entered, wearing for the first time the wig and gown of a judge, 
 and he was led to one of three arm-chairs at the front. A little 
 later there came through the thick walls the sound of soldiery 
 clashing arms outside the Castle, and at the next moment the 
 Governor arrived in General's uniform of red and gold, with 
 Fenella behind him in a large spring hat (her face glowing with 
 animation), and they took the two remaining chairs. Then the 
 Bishop in his scarlet robes came in, preceded by his crozier, and 
 the service began. 
 
 It was short but solemn. First a psalm of David (" He shall 
 judge thy people with righteousness and thy poor with judg- 
 ment ") ; then an epistle to the Romans (" Owe no man any- 
 thing ") ; and then an improvised prayer by the Bishop, asking the 
 Almighty to grant His strength and wisdom to His servant who 
 was shortly to take the solemn oath of his great office, that he 
 might deliver the poor and needy, deal faithfully with all men, 
 and show mercy to such as had erred and sinned. Then 
 came the hymn " Thou Judge of quick and dead," and finally 
 the Benediction. 
 
 Stowell was strongly aifected. He knelt at the prayer, and 
 when the service was at an end and it was time to go, Fenella 
 had to touch his shoulder. 
 
 The sun was bright outside, and they blinked their eyes as 
 they crossed the courtyard to the Court-house. 
 
 The stately little chamber was full, save for the seats that had 
 been reserved for the officials. There was a flash of faces, a 
 waft of perfume, a flutter of handkerchiefs and a hum of whis- 
 pering as the Governor stepped up to the scarlet dais, with Stowell 
 following him and' taking for the first time the seat of the Judge. 
 
 People who had been talking of the youth of the new Deemster 
 were heard to say that in his judge's wig he seemed older than they 
 
23ft THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 had expected and so like the portrait on the wall that one conld 
 almost fancy that his father was looking through the windows 
 of his eyes. 
 
 The proceedings began with the Governor calling upon Stowell 
 for his Commission, and then reading it aloud — " Our trusty and 
 well-beloved Victor Stowell to be Deemster of this isle." 
 
 After that everybody stood while the new Judge took the oath 
 of fealty to the King. Then the Deemster's clerk, Joshua Scarff, 
 in his coloured spectacles, handed up a quarto copy of the Bible 
 and a deep hush fell on the assembly, for the time had come for 
 the Deemster's oath. 
 
 The Governor and Stowell rose again, but all others remained 
 seated. Each laid one hand on the open Book, and the Governor 
 read the oath, clause by clause in loud, strong tones that seemed 
 to smite the walls as with blows. And, clause by clause, Stowell 
 repeated it after him in a lower voice that was sometimes 
 barely audible: 
 
 " Bt/ this Book and the holy contents thereof . . . . " 
 
 " By this Boole and the holy contents thereof . . . . " 
 
 " And by all the wonderful works rvhich God hath miraculously 
 wrought in heaven and on the earth beneath in six days and seven 
 nights, I, Victor Christian Stowell . . . . " 
 
 " I, Victor Christian Stowell, do swear that I will, without 
 respect or fear or friendship, love or gain, consanguinity or affinity, 
 envy or malice, execute the laws of this isle justly betwixt our 
 Sovereign Lord the King and his subjects within the isle, and 
 betwixt party and party, man and man, man and woman . . . . " 
 
 " . . . . man and woman 
 
 " .... as indifferently as the herring bone doth lie down the 
 middle of the fish." 
 
 There was a deep silence imtil the oath was ended and then a 
 general drawing of breath. 
 
 The Governor and the new Deemster sat and the Clerk 
 of the Rolls handed up the Liber Juramentorum, the Book of 
 Oaths, a large volume in faded leather with leaves of dis- 
 coloured parchment. 
 
 It was observed, and afterwards remarked upon, that when 
 Stowell took up the pen to sign he hesitated for a moment, and 
 then wrote his name rapidly and nervously, and that, in the silence, 
 a diamond ring which he wore on his right hand (it was a present 
 from Fenella) clashed with a discordant sound against the glass 
 tray as he threw the pen back. 
 
 The business being over, the Bishop gave out the hymn that is 
 
TEE DEEMBTEB'S OATH 231 
 
 sung at the close of nearly all Manx festivals, " O God, our 
 help," and all rose and sang. 
 
 Stowell rose with the rest, but he did not sing. He was no 
 longer conscious of the eyes that were on him. The emotion which 
 he haS been struggling to repress had at length conquered his self- 
 control. While the Court-house throbbed with the singing he was 
 thinking of the Judges who had stood in the same place and taken 
 that oath before him. There had been a thousand years of them. 
 
 He turned to the eastern wall and his father's melancholy eyes 
 seemed to look at him. " Yes, you too," they seemed to say, 
 " must now do the right, whatever it may cost you. You are no 
 longer yourself only. The souls of all your predecessors have this 
 day entered into your soul. You must consider yourself no more. 
 You must be just — or perish." 
 
 The hymn came to an end and there was a shuflBling of feet like 
 the pattering of water in the harbour at the top of the tide. The 
 next thing Stowell knew was that he was unrobed and going down 
 the Deemster's private staircase to the Court-yard of the Castle. 
 
 A large company was there waiting to congratulate him. Janet 
 (he had ordered that a front seat should be reserved for her) was 
 holding a little court of elderly ladies, to whom she was relating 
 wonderful stories of his childhood. She broke away from them to 
 kiss him. And then she kissed Fenella also and whispered, 
 
 " Don't forget to send him home in time, dear." 
 
 " I'll not forget," said Fenella. 
 
 And then she, on her part, with a face aflame, whispered some- 
 thing to the Governor, who, shaking hand's all round, was making 
 ready to go. 
 
 " What? You want to return in the automobile ? Very well, oflF 
 you go ! The Attorney will take pity on your forsaken father." 
 
 Outside the gate there was a great crowd, behind a regiment 
 of red-coated soldiers, and when the Governor and the Attorney- 
 General drove off they broke into a cheer which drowned the clash 
 of steel and the first bars of the National Anthem. 
 
 But that was as nothing compared with the demonstration when 
 Stowell went off in his car, sitting at the wheel, with Fenella 
 beside him. 
 
 " Long live the new Deemster — 'hip, hip — hip ! " 
 
 The great shout, the mighty roar of voices, brought a surging 
 
 to Stowell's throat and a tightening to his breast. It followed his 
 
 car, going off in the sunshine, imtil it shot over the bridge that 
 
 crossed the harbour, and there Fenella turned back her glistening 
 
 wet eyes and bowed. 
 
 ******* 
 
232 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Others heard it. The prisoners in their dark cells, rising from 
 their plank beds and hunching their shoulders in the chill air, 
 listened to the j oyous sounds from without, which broke the usual 
 silence of their gloomy walls, and said to themselves, 
 
 " What are they doing now, I wonder ? " 
 
 There were seven prisoners in the Castle that day. One of 
 them was Bessie Collister. 
 
 II 
 
 " Addio ! See you at supper ! " 
 
 Fenella was waving to the Governor and the Attorney, and 
 laughing at their slow speed, as she and Stowell shot past them 
 before they had left the town. 
 
 The morning was beautiful, the sky blue, the sea glistening 
 under a fresh breeze. They were running, bounding, leaping 
 along the roads, and talking loudly above the hum of the car. 
 Stowell had caught the contagion of Fehella's higb spirits and 
 aiwakened from his long trance. 
 
 " Well, what did you think of it? " 
 
 " The ceremony? Lovely! " 
 
 " But you were crying all the time ! " 
 
 " It must have been through looking at you, then. There was 
 everybody doing you honour, and you looked like a man going 
 to execution." 
 
 He laughed ; she laughed ; they laughed together, but they had 
 their serious moments for all that. One of them came when she 
 spoke of the Oath, saying how quaint and amusing it was. 
 
 " A little frightening, though," said Stowell. 
 
 " Frightening? " 
 
 " Well, yes, I thought so. Made one feel as if old Job had had 
 something to say for himself. Who was I to judge others, having 
 done wrong myself? " 
 
 " Really! You wicked fellow! I wasn't aware you had so 
 many sins to answer for. But I know! " 
 
 And then, in flash after flash, each sparkling like a diamond, 
 came pictures of his predecessors. The solemn judge; the jesting 
 judge; the judge who suspected all men of lying; the judge who 
 believed everybody told the truth; the sour, dour, swearing and 
 hanging judge, who served Justice as if she had been a Jugger- 
 naut, and the gay Judge who bought and sold her as he did 
 his mist'-esses. 
 
 " What a procession ! And the question was, which kind were 
 you going to belong to — eh ? " 
 
THE DEEMSTBR'S OATH 233 
 
 Again he laughed; they both laughed; and the car flew on. 
 Another serious moment came. He mentioned the Book of Oaths, 
 saying that while turning over its leaves with their faded ink he 
 had been seized with a sudden fear of writing his name, whereupon 
 FeneUa, with a mischievous look of gravity, cried again, 
 
 " I know. You thought you were signing your death-warrant." 
 
 Yet another serious moment came when she asked him if he had 
 not been proud of the send-off his countrymen had given him at the 
 Castle gate. He replied that he would have been so but for the 
 wretched thought that if anything happened to him their love 
 would as suddenly turn to hate, and they would howl as loudly 
 as they had cheered. 
 
 " But what nonsense ! " cried FeneUa. " Love — ^what I call 
 love — is not like that. It never dies and never changes." 
 
 "Never?" 
 
 " Never ! If I loved anybody and anything happened, I should 
 fight the world for him." 
 
 " Even if he were in the wrong .'' " 
 
 " Goodness yes ! Where would be the merit of fighting for 
 him if he were in the right? " 
 
 " Darling ! " cried Stowell, and, the road being clear, and no- 
 body in sight, he had to slow down the car to kiss her. 
 
 After that he threw off the solemnity of the ceremony and 
 gave himself up to the intoxication of love. With Fenella by his 
 side, looking up at him with her beaming eyes, and laughing with 
 her gay raillery, what else could he think about? A few miles 
 out of Castletown he said, 
 
 " Let us take the old road back — it's longer." 
 
 " Yes, it's longer." 
 
 Every fresh mile was a fresh delight. How the Spring was 
 coming on ! Look at the gorse, already in its glory ! And the 
 lambs j ust born and still trembling on their doddering limbs ! And 
 the tragic old hens with their iluffy yellow broods ! And then the 
 cottages, half buried in their big fuchsias ! And the farmers 
 whitewashing their farmhouses to wipe out the stains of winter ! 
 
 " What a jolly old world it is, isn't it? " he cried. 
 
 " Isn't it? " she answered, and without looking to see if the 
 way was clear, he had to slow down the car and kiss her again. 
 
 A few miles south of Douglas they turned into a road that ran 
 like a shelf along the edge of the cliffs, with the sea surging on the 
 grey rocks below, and nothing but its round rim against the sky. 
 T(he breeze was stronger out there, but every gust was a joy. 
 Stowell took off his hat and threw it to the bottom of the car. 
 Fenella unpinned hers and held it on her knee. His black hair 
 
234 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 tumbled over his forehead, and her bronze-brown hair, loosened 
 from its knot, flew about her head like a flag. 
 
 More than ever now they had the sense of flying. The sun 
 danced on the breakers ; the foam floated in trembling flakes into 
 the blue sky; the sea-fowl screamed about them. With the taste 
 of the brine on their lips, and the sting of it in their blood, they 
 shouted at every sight and sound. , 
 
 " Look at that white horse down there ! See how he rears his 
 head and plunges forward. Ah, he has had enough! No, he's 
 coming on again wdth a roar ! " 
 
 " But look at the sea-holly and the wild thyme ! And the rab- 
 bits scuttling into their holes ! And the goats on the peaks of 
 the cliffs ! " 
 
 " Lord! What a jolly old world it is, though! " 
 
 " Didn't you say that before, Victor .'' " 
 
 " Did I.'' Well, I'm going to say it every blessed day of my 
 life to come." 
 
 " No, no ! Take care ! We're on the edge of the cliff. We'll 
 be over ! " 
 
 " No matter — another kiss ! " 
 
 The wind was from the south, and the sea, breaking along the 
 broken line of the coast, was making a sound like that of the ring- 
 ing of bells. It was the phenomenon of nature which gave rise to 
 iihe tradition that a town lies buried under the sea at that point, so 
 that Manx fishermen, coming back from their fishing-ground at 
 sunrise, will sometimes say, " The wedding bells are ringing ! " 
 
 StoweU heard them now, over the roar of the waves in their 
 mad welter, and he cried, 
 
 " Listen to the bells ! " 
 
 "What bells.?" 
 
 " Our bells ! " he cried. 
 
 And then at the full power of their lungs, over the hum of the 
 engine and the boom of the breakers, they sang a verse of the song 
 of the submerged city: 
 
 " Here mhere the ocean is whitened with foam. 
 Here stood a city, an altar, a home. 
 
 Hark to the bells that ring under the sea. 
 
 Salve Regina! Salve Regina! 
 Love is the Queen for you and for me. 
 Salve, Salve Regina! " 
 
 After that they laughed again, and in sheer gaiety of heart, 
 sang every nonsensical thing they could think about, until, being 
 breathless and hoarse and compelled to stop, Fenella said. 
 
TEE DEEMSTER'S OATB 235 
 
 " I wonder what those people in the Court-house would think 
 if they could see their great man now ! But I suppose there has 
 never been a great man since the beginning of the world but some 
 woman has known him for what he really is — ^just a big boy! " 
 
 At three o'clock in the afternoon luncheon was over at Govern- 
 ment House; the Governor and the Attorney-General had gone off 
 to smoke ; Miss Green, like a wise woman, had betaken herself to 
 her room, and Fenella and Stowell were alone. 
 
 " Now you must get away to Ballamoar. I promised Janet to 
 send you back in time. Some kind of welcome home, you know." 
 
 But Stowell stood over her (she was at the piano) and 
 whispered, 
 
 "When.?" 
 
 She pretended not to understand him, and again, and in a more 
 emphatic voice, he demanded, 
 
 "When?" 
 
 She was compelled to comprehend at last, and said that if all 
 went well, and he behaved himself, and her father approved, a 
 month that day, perhaps .... no, two months .... 
 
 "Done!" 
 
 A few minutes later they were in the porch for their last part- 
 ing. He was holding her in a long embrace. He felt like Jacob 
 who had waited so long for Rachel. He would never be entirely 
 happy until she was wholly his. 
 
 She laughed — a nervous and palpitating laugh. 
 
 " Rachel indeed? Take care it isn't Leah in the morning, iSir." 
 
 But seeing the cloud that crossed his face at that word, she 
 kissed him of herself, saying they belonged to each other already 
 and nothing could ever separate them. 
 
 " Nothing? " 
 
 "Nothing!" 
 
 And then a long tremulous kiss and he was gone. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Home! 
 
 He had reached the top of the mountain road, and the setting 
 sun was striking him full in the face. To right and left, before 
 and behind, across the broad waters, stood the dim ghosts of 
 England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. But what did he care 
 for these greater scenes? Down yonder was Ballamoar, and to 
 him, as to his father, it was enough to be Deemster of Man and 
 Judge of his own people. 
 
 News of his home-coming had been telegraphed from Douglas, 
 
236 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 and when his car shot out of the glen the church bells were ring- 
 ing all over the Curagh. People working in the fields climbed the 
 hedges to wave as he went by, and feeble old men came to the 
 doors of the cottages to lift up the hooked handles of their 
 sticks to him. 
 
 On reaching the entrance to Ballamoar he found a crowd wait- 
 ing at the gate, and a streamer from post to post, saying — 
 
 WELCOME TO 
 
 HIS father's son. 
 
 The hum of the automobile awakened the colony of rooks in the 
 tall trees, and, swirling above the lawn, they raised a deafening 
 clamour. This brought from the porch Janet (back from Castle- 
 town) with a flutter of black frocks and white aprons behind her. 
 
 A great company of the people of the parish were at tea in the 
 hall, chiefly women, but of all classes, from the nervous wife of 
 the Vicar to the widow of the cowman. 
 
 " Don't get up," cried Stowell. 
 
 He had entered with a shout, tossing his hat on to the settle 
 and saluting everybody by name, just as he used to do when he 
 was a boy and annexed them all for relations. 
 
 " Sit here. Auntie Kitty. This is your seat, Alice. Parson, 
 wont you take the bottom of the table ? And, Dad " (this to Robbie 
 Creer in his Sunday homespun), " take my place by Mrs. Creer 
 while I help Jane with the teacups." 
 
 " Did thou hear that, mistress ? " said Robbie behind his hand 
 to Janet, who was turning the tap of the tea urn. " They may make 
 him Dempster, but he doesn't forget his old friends for all." 
 
 In a moment everybody was talking and laughing. It was just 
 as if a fresh breeze had come down from the mountains on a hot 
 day in harvest. 
 
 During tea Joshua Scarflf" arrived with a green portfolio under 
 his arm. 
 
 " I've brought some documents you'll wish to look at before 
 the Court sits, your Honour." 
 
 " Good ! Put them on the desk in the library and then come 
 back and have some tea." 
 
 The twilight deepened and the company prepared to go. 
 Stowell stood at the door, with Janet beside him, while the young 
 girls of the choir of the Methodist chapel ranged themselves in 
 front of the house and sang in their sweet young voices, which 
 floated through the gathering gloom, " God be with you till we 
 meet again." 
 
 "Good-night, all!" 
 
THE DEEMSTER'S OATB 237 
 
 " Good-night, your Honour ! " 
 
 Night! The great day had dropped asleep; the clock on the 
 landing was striking nine; dinner was over; Janet (she had " a 
 head ") had gone to her room, and Stowell was stepping on to 
 the piazza. 
 
 The wind had fallen and the night was silent, almost breathless. 
 The revolving light on the Point of Ayre was answering to the 
 gleam on Galloway; and the moon, which was almost at the full, 
 was glistening on the waters that rolled between. 
 
 How beautifulj how limpid! It was just such a night as that 
 on which Fenella and he had sat out there together. He could still 
 see her as she was then — ^the slim yoimg girl in a white dress and 
 satin slippers, with her intoxicating f vce in the frame of the silk 
 handkerchief which she had bound about her head. And now she 
 was to become his wife ! 
 
 A great new vista was opening out to him. Life was about to 
 begin in earnest. With that splendid woman by his side he was 
 going to rise (if God would be so good to him) out of the muddy 
 imperfections of his lower nature. His breast swelled; his throat 
 tightened; his heart sang; he was entirely happy. 
 
 Suddenly he remembered Alick Gell. He had not seen him at 
 Castletown that day, or at all since he returned from London. 
 Why was that.'' Could it be possible that the matter they had 
 spoken about on the steamer .... 
 
 No, no 1 Still he must fulfil his promise. He would step into 
 the library and write a line Saying he was ready to go down to 
 Derby Haven if necessary. 
 
 As he passed through the dining-room he framed the words of 
 his letter: " Where were you, you old scoundrel, that you were not 
 at the Swearing-in? I suppose the matter you mentioned has 
 righted itself since I went away, but if not and you still 
 want me . . . . " 
 
 IV 
 
 The house was very quiet. He felt an unaccountable chill 
 coming over him. On the threshold of the library he paused. He 
 had the sense of a mysterious presence in the room. The log fire 
 had burnt low; the lamp on the desk, under his mother's portrait, 
 had been turned down ; deep shadows lay around. 
 
 Making an eiFort he entered, stepping softly, yet hardly know- 
 ing why he did so. On reaching the desk he turned up the light 
 and then his eye fell on the green portfolio which he had last seen 
 under Joshua Scarff's arm. It bore a label on which was written: 
 
238 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Calendar of Cases to be tried at the Spring Session of 
 the Court of General Gaol Delivery. Presiding Deemster — 
 Deemster Victor Stowell." 
 
 Then came a moral thunderclap. Opening the Calendar he 
 read these words on the first page of it: 
 
 REK V. CORTEEN 
 FOB MURDER 
 DEPOSITIONS. 
 
 That Elisabeth Corteen, commonly called Bessie Collis- 
 ter, on or about the fifth day of April — in the parish of 
 Ballaugh, in the Isle of Man, feloniously, rvilfully, and of 
 her malice aforethought, did kill and murder a certain male 
 child, contrary to the form of the Statute in such cases made 
 and provided, and against the peace of our Sovereign Lord 
 the King, his Crorvn and dignity. 
 
 A wist rose before Stowell's eyes. He could not read any 
 more, but stood for a moment looking down at the writing. Life 
 seemed to rim out of him in a pounding rush. The walls of the 
 room, and particularly the picture of his mother, began to reel 
 about in a rapidly increasing vertigo. He put his hand on a chair 
 but felt nothing. At the next moment darkness came and he knew 
 no more. 
 
 END OF THIRD BOOK 
 
FOURTH BOOK 
 THE RETRIBUTION 
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 
 
 THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND 
 
 Next day the insular newspapers announced that the new 
 Deemster, on his return home from Castletown, after the ceremony 
 of his swearing-in, had had a sudden seizure. A heavy fall had 
 been heard by the servants, and they had found their master lying 
 on the floor of the library, unconscious. 
 
 Early in the morning Robbie Creer had driven into town for 
 Dr. Clucas, who had ordered rest — absolute rest. 
 
 " We must have three full days in bed, Mr. Stowell, Sir. And 
 if it is necessary to postpone the Court of General Gaol Delivery, I 
 think .... I really think we must ask his Excellency to do so." 
 
 Stowell drew a deep breath and fell asleep. When he awoke it 
 was mid-day. He was in bed in his father's bedroom and Fenella 
 was sitting by his side, holding his hand. After he had opened 
 his eyes she leaned over him and kissed him, saying in a soft voice 
 that he would soon be better. 
 
 " It was that oath-taking, dear. I could see you were taking 
 it too seriously." 
 
 His heart was stiU warm with the embraces of yesterday, yet he 
 tried in vain to kiss her back. But he laughed a little and made 
 light of his seizure. It was nothing, but a little dizziness ; he would 
 be about again in a day or two. 
 
 " Would you like me to stay and nurse you? " 
 
 " No, no ! . . . . I mean you needn't . . . . " 
 
 His stammering broke down and his face gloomed, but with a 
 quick smile she said, 
 
 " Oh, very well. Sir, if you won't have me, Janet will take care 
 of you, and send me a telegram night and morning to say how 
 you are. Won't you, Janet? " 
 
 From some unseen place behind the curtains of the four-poster, 
 Janet, snuffling and blowing her nose, answered that she would. 
 
 " And now I'll be wishing you good-morning. Sir," said 
 
 239 
 
240 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Fenella, making (after another kiss) a stately ourtsey to him as he 
 lay in bed. 
 
 The sounds of the wheels of the Governor's carriage having 
 died off on the drive, Stowell found himself alone and face to face 
 with a tragic problem — what was he to do about the trial of 
 Bessie Collister? 
 
 This, then, was the case Fenella had written about while he 
 was in London. Why had he not thought of it before? He 
 could not pretend that he had never had misgivings. Again and 
 again the evil shadow of a dread possibility had crossed his mind 
 like a vanishing dream at the moment of awakening. 
 
 He had put it aside, banished it, explained it away to himself. 
 In the fullness of his happiness he had even forgotten it altogether. 
 But Nature did not forget. And now his sin had fallen on him 
 like an avalanche — fallen as only an avalanche falls, when the sky 
 is blue, the air is warm and the sun is shining. 
 
 He had no doubt about Bessie's guilt. But what about his own? 
 And if he were guilty (in the second degree), being the first cause 
 of the girl's crime, how could he sit in judgment upon her? 
 
 To try his own victim, to question her, to go through the mock- 
 ery of weighing the evidence against her, to condemn her, to sen- 
 tence her — it would be impossible, utterly impossible, contrary to 
 all legal usage, a violation of the spirit if not the letter of his 
 oath in his first hour as a Judge. 
 
 And then the human side of it — the terror, the peril! That 
 poor girl in the dock, in the depths of her s;hame and the throes of 
 her temptation, while he, her fellow sinner .... 
 
 No, no, no ! It would not only be a crime against Justice ; it 
 would be a sin against God. 
 
 Joshua Scarff came in the afternoon. Standing by the bed, and 
 looking down through his dark spectacles, he said, 
 
 " This is a pity, your Honour ! A great pity ! Such interest- 
 ing cases ! Your Honour must have wished to study them before 
 sitting in Court." 
 
 " Joshua," said Stowell (he was breathing hard and speaking 
 with difficulty), " go to Deemster Taubman, tell him what has 
 happened, and say that if, as a great favour, he can take the Court 
 next week, I shall be eternally grateful." 
 
 The Deemster's clerk was almost speechless with dismay. His 
 Honour's first Court ! Pity ! Great pity ! 
 
 But Stowell felt an immense relief. Thank God, there was 
 another Deemster to fall back upon. He need not break the spirit 
 of his oath. Bad as the event was at the best, at least there need 
 be no donflict between his private interests and his public duty. 
 
THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND 241 
 
 II 
 
 Stowell, in spite of Dr. Clucas, got up next morning. He was 
 sitting before the fire in the library when Janet came in to say 
 that Mrs. CoUister of Baldromma was asking to see the Deemster. 
 She had come to plead for her daughter — ^that girl who was to be 
 tried for killing her baby. 
 
 " I told her she shouldn't have come here and that the old 
 Deemster would never have seen her. But it's pitiful to see the 
 poor thing. She is lame, too, and has walked all the way. What 
 am I to say to her } " 
 
 Stowell struggled with himself for a moment, and then, with 
 an embarrassed utterance said, 
 
 " Let her come in." 
 
 " This is very wrong of you, Mrs. CoUister " (he was trying to 
 keep a firm lip and to speak severely) ; " you know it is against 
 all rule." 
 
 The old woman, trembling and wiping her eyes, said she knew 
 it was, but she had known his father. There had been none like 
 him — no, not the whole island over. He had been every poor 
 person's friend. If anybody had been injured she had only to 
 draw to him for refuge and he had protected her. And if any 
 poor girl had gone wrong, and broken the law, perhaps, it was the 
 big man himself who was always there to show her mercy. 
 
 " That's why I thought maybe his son, if he had his father's 
 heart .... and people are saying he has too .... maybe his 
 son wouldn't send a poor mother away when she's in trouble and 
 has nobody else to go to." 
 
 " Sit down, Mrs. CoUister." 
 
 The old woman sat in the chair which Janet turned for her, 
 and began on her story. 
 
 " Its about Bessie." 
 She had always been a good girl. No mother ever had a better. 
 And if people were saying she had been in trouble before, might 
 the Lord forgive them when their own time came, for it was lies 
 they were putting on the girl. 
 
 " And if she's in trouble now, your Honour, it's like it's not all 
 her own fault neither." 
 
 First there was her father. He had been shocking hard on the 
 girl, shutting her out of the house in the dark of night and so 
 throwing her into the way of temptation. 
 
 " Until they lay me under the sod I'll never get it out of my 
 ears. Sir — -the sound of her foot going off on the street" 
 16 
 
242 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 And •when the girl came home again, looking that weak that it 
 seemed as if the world wasn't willing to stand under her, the father 
 had taunted her with coming back to eat them up, and maybe 
 bringing another mouth to feed'. 
 
 " So if she did the terrible shocking thing they're saying .... 
 I don't know if she did, your Honour .... I don't know if she 
 ever left the dairy loft from the minute I took her up to it until 
 Cain the constable (may the Lord forgive him!) came dragging 
 her down .... but if she did, it's like it was because the poor 
 child was alone in the dark midnight, and out of herself entirely, 
 and not knowing what she was doing, and perhaps freckened of 
 what the old man would be saying in the morning." 
 
 Stowell was silent. The old woman cried softly to herself for 
 a moment and then said, 
 
 " Nobody knows what that is, your Honour, except them that 
 has gone through it." 
 
 Then she wiped her eyes, one after another, and said she could 
 not sleep " a wink on the night," lying in her white bed and think- 
 ing of Bessie where she was now. And having read " in class " 
 last evening how the Lord heard the cry of Hagar for her son in 
 the wilderness she had thought his Honour might hear her cry 
 for her daughter. 
 
 Stowell knew that his feelings as a man were getting the better 
 of his duty as a Judge, so he tried to be severe with the old woman, 
 telling her she had no right to come to him, and that he had done 
 wrong to listen to her. 
 
 " In fact I could not have received you at all but for one thing 
 — I am not going to try your daughter's case." 
 
 The old woman was appalled. 
 
 " Do you mean. Sir, that you'll not be trying Bessie ? " 
 
 " No, Deemster Taubman will probaibly do so." 
 
 At that the old woman broke into a flood of tears. 
 
 " Aw dear ! Aw dear ! And me praying on my knees on the 
 kitchen floor that the Lord would bring you back in time from 
 London — someones being so hard on poor girls in trouble ! " 
 
 Again Stowell was silent, and for some moments nothing was 
 heard but the woman's broken sobs. At length, unable to bear 
 any longer the sight of the old mother's disappointment, he said 
 he would do what he could for her. If he could not sit on her 
 daughter's case he woxild write to Deemster Taubman, explaining 
 her condition and describing her temptations. 
 
 " God bless you for that," cried the old woman. And then 
 Janet said it was time to go, his Honour being unwell. 
 
THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND 243 
 
 " May the Lord give him health and strength and long 
 life, ma'am ! " 
 
 People were right when they were telling her he had his 
 father's heart. He had too. She was going out of the room with 
 hope kindled, when she said, 
 
 " You must excuse a poor woman if she did wrong in coming 
 to you. Sir." 
 
 " We'll say no more about that now," said Stowell. " Go 
 home and rest, mother." 
 
 At that word the old woman broke down utterly. But after a 
 moment her weak eyes shone and she said, 
 
 " Bessie is not your quality, Sir, but if she gets off she'll write 
 to thank you." 
 
 " No, no ! She must never do that," said Stowell. 
 
 " Come now, Mrs. CoUister," said Janet. 
 
 But having reached the door, the old woman turned her wet 
 face, and seeing the portrait of Stowell's mother on the wall, and 
 mistaking it for that of Fenella, she said, 
 
 " They're telling me you're to be married soon, your Honour. 
 May the Lord give you peace and love in your own home, and 
 that's, better than gold or lands. Sir." 
 
 Stowell tried to reply, but he could only wave his hand and turn 
 to the window as the old woman left the room. 
 
 Why not? What sin against God would it be to imite this 
 suffering woman to her suffering daughter, if he could do so with- 
 out wronging Justice? 
 
 A moment afterwards Janet came back wiping her eyes. 
 
 " Oh, these mothers ! They're fit enough to break one's 
 heart, Victor." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Stowell was in the dining-room next day when he heard the 
 clatter of a horse's hoofs on the drive, and, a moment later, a voice 
 in the hall, saying, 
 
 " The Deemster will see me, Jane." 
 
 It was Alick Gell. His tall figure was more bent than usual; 
 his hair was disordered ; his eyes glittered ; he was deeply agitated. 
 
 " Excuse me, old fellow. You know why I've not been here 
 before. It's Bessie. I'm busy every hour, getting up her case. 
 Awful, isn't it? I can't make myself believe it even yet. Some- 
 times in the middle of the night I hear myself crying ' Good God, 
 it can't be true ! ' " 
 
 Stowell could scarcely find voice to reply. He remembered 
 
244 TSE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 what he had advised Fenella to get Gell to do. Had Bessie 
 told him? " 
 
 " I received Fenella's letter and of course I am taking up the 
 defence. I've seen Bessie, too, and arranged everything. She's 
 innocent and I'll fight for her to the last breath in my body. 
 But look here — read this," he said, dragging a crumbled news- 
 paper from his pocket, and handing it to Stowell with a trem- 
 bling hand. 
 
 It was a copy of the day's insular paper containing a para- 
 graph which said that the continued illness of the new Deemster 
 would probably prevent him from presiding at the forthcoming 
 sitting of the Court of Greneral Gaol Delivery. 
 
 " That's the first edition. When it was published at twelve 
 o'clock I couldn't wait until the afternoon train, so I hired a horse 
 from Fargher, the jobmaster, and I've galloped aU the way. 
 Don't tell me it's true." 
 
 StoweU answered in a low tone that perhaps it might have to 
 be, whereupon Gell made a cry of dismay. 
 
 " Then God help my poor girl! It will be Taubman, and 
 she'll not have a dog's chance with him." 
 
 Taubman was a brute — especially in cases of this kind. What 
 did people say about him — ^that when he saw a woman in the dock 
 he was like a cat who had seen a rat ? It was true. He was always 
 bullying the juries who showed humanity to girls in trouble. 
 
 " The infernal old blockhead ! He has rheumatism in the legs, 
 they say. I wish to heaven he had it in his throat, and it would 
 choke him." 
 
 And then the barbarous old Statute! Practically repealed in 
 every other country, but still capable of operation in the Isle of 
 Man. Think of it! Five years, ten years, fifteen years — even 
 death itself, perhaps ! 
 
 " Stowell, we are old chums .... it's not right of me, I know 
 that .... but for the sake of our old friendship, sit on Bessie's 
 case yourself." 
 
 Stowell felt as if he were on the edge of a precipice. Abysmal 
 depths lay before him at the next step. With an awful secret in 
 his heart he felt that it was almost impossible to speak one word 
 more without betraying himself. He was silent , for a moment 
 while Gell stood over him with wild eyes which he had never seen 
 before. At length he said, 
 
 " Bessie is to plead Not Guilty ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " Will she stick to that? " 
 
TEE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND 245 
 
 " Undoubtedly. Why shouldn't she? Besides, she has given 
 me her promise." 
 
 Again Stowell was silent for a moment; then he said, 
 
 " I cannot promise to conduct the Court, but if Taubman will 
 do so, and I'm fit to sit with him, I'll .... I'll see she has a 
 fair trial." 
 
 Gell made a shout of joy. 
 
 " That's good enough for me. Just like you, old fellow." 
 
 He snatched up his cap — a different man in a moment. 
 
 " I must get back to town now. I have the witnesses to 
 arrange for. Not too many of them unfortunately. There's the 
 mother, she's all right, but not likely to be good in the box. I'm 
 not calUng the step-father. It seems he's giving the case away 
 in the glen. The damned old blackguard ! I sTiould like to break 
 his ugly neck. I jolly well wiU, too, one of these days. But Bessie 
 will clear herself. Since she's going to be my wife she must leave 
 the Court without a stain. Good-bye and Grod bless you, old chap ! 
 .... No, no, don't come to the door." (Stowell was for seeing 
 him out.) " Take care of yourself. Good men are scarce. And 
 then you've got to be fit for the Court, you know. By-bye ! " 
 
 Stowell watched him from the window as he rode down the 
 drive on his tired horse, patting its neck and encouraging it with 
 cheery cries. 
 
 Now he understood why Bessie had held off while GeU had 
 wished to marry her. It had been a case of the wife of the Peel 
 fisherman over again, with the difference that Bessie (to avoid the 
 danger of deceiving her husband) had made away with her child 
 before marriage instead of after it. Wild, foolish, frantic scheme ! 
 Yet what courage ! What strength ! What affection ! 
 
 But if, under Taubman's searching questions, the conspiracy 
 of love should fail, and Bessie's defence should collapse, and Gell 
 should see that she had deceived him, and that he too .... 
 
 No, no, that must not be ! After aU, what outrage on Justice 
 would it be to keep a case like this out of the hands of a cold- 
 blooded inhuman legal machine who would commit more crime 
 than he punished.'' 
 
 Still standing by the window, Stowell heard the clatter of a 
 horse's hoofs* on the high road. Gell, in high spirits, was gallop- 
 ing home. 
 
 IV 
 
 Later in the day Stowell was alone in the library reading the 
 Depositions. In his secret heart he knew that a wicked temptation . 
 
248 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 had come to him — -the temptation to get Bessie oS, and to stop 
 the flood of evil which would surely follow if Deemster Taubman 
 tried her and she were condemned. But all "the same he was 
 struggling to drown his qualms in contempt of the ease 
 against her. 
 
 How little there was to it! The direct evidence was almost 
 childish. The medical testimony was the only thing of conse- 
 quence, but how sloppy, how inconclusive ! Was there anything 
 against Bessie which he, if he had been the advocate for the de- 
 fence, could not have riddled with as many holes as there were 
 in a cullender.' Then why shouldn't he sit on her case? 
 
 Guilty ? Perhaps she was ; but, even so, was it not the theory 
 of the law that she had to be proved guilty — ^that a prisoner should 
 have a fair legal trial and be convicted or acquitted according to 
 the evidence before the Ck)urt? Why shouldn't he? 
 
 Suddenly he became aware of a tumult at the front door. 
 Somebody was bawling in a loud voice, 
 
 " I'll see the Dempster if I have to shout the house down." 
 
 It was Dan Baldromma. Stowell stepped into the hall and 
 said to the housemaid, who was barring the door against 
 the intruder, 
 
 " Let him come in, Jane." 
 
 Dan, with his short, gross figure, rolled into the house without 
 remembering to take his hat off. 
 
 " Well, what do you want? " said Stowell — ^he was quivering 
 with anger. 
 
 " I want to know what is to be done for me ? " said Dan. 
 
 "For you?" 
 
 " For my daughter then — ^my step-daughter, I mane." 
 
 When he had seen Mr. Sto'U last — it was at his office in 
 Eamsey — he had warned him that the man who had got his 
 daughter into disgrace had got to marry her. But had he? No! 
 He had refused — he must have done. And that was the reason 
 why she did what they say. But, behold you, who was being 
 blamed for it? Himself! Yes, people were looking black at him 
 and saying he had thrown the girl into the way of temptation. 
 
 That was not the worst of it either. He had expected dacent 
 tratement about the farm when he became father-in-law to the 
 man who would come into it by heirship. But now the girl was 
 in Castle Rushen, and if they sent her over the wiater the Spaker 
 would be turning him out of house and home. 
 
 " He's after threatening it already — ^to show me the road at 
 Hollantide .... What's that you say, Sir? Thinking of my- 
 
THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND 247 
 
 self, am I ? Maybe I am, then, and! what for shouldn't I ? Near 
 is my shirt but nearer is my skin, they're saying." 
 
 Stowell, swept by gusts of passion, was doing his best to 
 control himself. 
 
 " Well, what have you come to me for? " he asked. 
 
 Dan thrust forward his thick neck with his bull-like gesture, 
 and said, 
 
 " To tell yon to get her ofF." 
 
 " Even if she is guilty ? " 
 
 " Chut! Who's to know that if the Coorts acquit her? They 
 are wayses and wayses. Lawyers are mortal clever at twisting 
 the law when they're wanting to. You're Dempster now ; and the 
 bosom friend of the man that got my girl into this trouble has got 
 to get her out of it." 
 
 " So," said Stowell, breathing hard, " you have come to ask me 
 to degrade Justice " (Dan made a grunt of contempt), " not to 
 save the girl but to protect you — you and your rag of a character ?" 
 
 Dan drew himself up with a short laugh, half bitter and 
 half triumphant. 
 
 " Rag, is it? Take care what you're saying, Mr. Sto'll, Sir. 
 You may be a big man in the island now, but there's them that's 
 bigger and that's the people." 
 
 Stowell pointed with a quivering hand to the clock on the 
 landing, and said, 
 
 " Look at that clock. If you're not out of this house in 
 one minute . . . . " 
 
 Dan's laugh rose to a cry of derision. 
 
 " So that's it, is it? That's what the first Justice of the Peace 
 in the Isle of Man is, eh? Son of the ould Dempster too! The 
 grand ould holy saint as they're . . . . " 
 
 But before he could finish, Stowell, with a shout that drowned 
 Dan's laugh as if it had been the whimper of a baby girl, laid hold 
 of the man by the collar of his coat and the slack of his trousers 
 and flung him out of the open door and clashed it after him. 
 
 Dan, who had rolled and tossed and bumped on the path like a 
 fat hogshead kecked from the tail of a cart, picked himself up and 
 went staggering down the drive, shaking his first at the house and 
 pouring his maledictions upon it in a voice that was like the 
 broken howl of a limping dog. 
 
 Janet came running from her room, and seeing Stowell with 
 his eyes aflame and panting for breath, said, 
 
 " Oh dear ! O'h dear ! Now you'll be worse." 
 
 " On the contrary, I'll be better — better in every way," he said. 
 
248 THE MABTER OF MAN 
 
 His resolution was taken. Never would he sit on Bessie s 
 case. Nothing should tempt him to do so. 
 But Fate had not yet done with him. 
 
 On the afternoon of the following day Stowell walked for a 
 long hour on the shore, trying to deaden the tumult in his brain in 
 the loud surge of the sea. Returning to BaUamoar he found the 
 Governor's carriage outside the house. Had the Governor come to 
 see him .'' It was Fenella. She was at tea with Janet in the library. 
 
 Although she rose to greet him with aU the sunshine of her 
 smile he could see that her face was feverish. 
 
 " Ive come to the north on three errands," she said. 
 
 " So.? " 
 
 " First to see yourself, of course, and I find that, in spite of 
 doctor's orders, you have already resumed your gypsy habits." 
 
 " He mould go out, dear," said Janet. 
 
 " Next, to deliver a message from the Governor." 
 
 "Yes.?" 
 
 " He has postponed the Court for three days in the hope that 
 you may be able to sit then." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " My last errand was to see the mother of that poor girl who is 
 to be charged with the murder of her child." 
 
 " The mother? " 
 
 " Yes, I've just left her. She still says she knows nothing. 
 It's pitiful! A simple, sincere, religious old soul, who has seen 
 trouble of her own apparently. I don't think for a moment she 
 would tell an untruth, yet it is easy to see that in her heart she 
 believes her daughter to be guilty." 
 
 " Guilty.? " 
 
 " Yes, but there's somebody guiltier than the girl — the man." 
 
 Stowell was silent; but he felt his face twitching. 
 
 " That's why I am so anxious that you should sit on this case 
 if you can, Victor, not leave it to Deemster Taubman. Old Judges 
 often refuse to investigate collateral facts, and so the woman is 
 punished and the man goes free." 
 
 " They can't do otherwise, dear. They can't try the man." 
 
 " Not if he has been a party to the crime ? " 
 
 "A party . . . . " 
 
 " Yes ! I'm satisfied that in this case he is, too." 
 
 The girl might be guilty, but she could not have dine all s'he 
 was charged with. It was physically impossible. Somebody must 
 
THE WIND AND TEE WHIRLWIND 249 
 
 have helped her. And that somebody (the old mother having to 
 be ruled out) must be the man -who had it to his interest to save 
 his miserable character by concealing the fact that the girl had 
 given birth to a child at all. 
 
 Stowell had as much as he could do to cover his embarrassment. 
 He lowered his voice and said, 
 
 " That's a blind alley. I've read the Depositions. I'm sure it 
 is, dear." 
 
 " Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't," said Fenella. " I intend to 
 follow it up anyway." 
 
 " How? " said Stowell, but rather with his mouth than 
 his voice. 
 
 " I'm already on the track of something." 
 
 " On the track . . . . " 
 
 " Yes. It seems that somebody has been telling the mother 
 that on the night when the girl left home (shut out by her abom- 
 inable step-father, you know) she went to the house of a Mrs. 
 Quayle, living on the south shore in Ramsey." 
 
 Stowell's heart thumped and his lips quivered. 
 
 "Mrs. Quayle?" 
 
 " Why, that must be the housekeeper at your chambers, dear," 
 said Janet, busy with her teacups. 
 
 " You know her ? . . . . But then everybody knows every- 
 body in the Isle of Man," said Fenella. 
 
 " With a sense of duplicity, Stowell found himself saying, 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Well, I'm going to see this Mrs. Quayle on my way home to 
 Government House. She'll be able to tell me how long the girl 
 stayed with her, who took her away, and where she went to." 
 
 Stowell dropped his head, feeling that he wanted to escape 
 from the rooom, and Fenella (indignantly, passionately, vehe- 
 mently) went on to denounce the guilty man. 
 
 " Of course the girl is shielding him. A woman always does 
 that. I should do it myself if I were in the same position. But 
 oh, how I should like to find him out! Even if he has taken no 
 part in the actual crime, how I should like to punish him — ^to 
 expose him! You must sit on this case — you really must, dear." 
 
 When the time came for Fenella to go Janet took her upstairs 
 to look at some new decorations that had been made in the room 
 that was to be her boudoir. Stowell remained in the library, and 
 the sound of Fenella's step on the floor above beat on his stunned 
 brain with the drumming noise of a train in a tunnel. 
 
 He had a sense of cowardice which he had never felt before. 
 
250 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 At one moment he wanted to tell Fenella everything, thinking that 
 would be the end of his tortures. But at the next he reflected 
 that it would be the beginning of hers — inflicting an incurable 
 woimd upon her afi'ection. And then if Bessie were going to be 
 acquitted, as seemed possible (the evidence being so imconvincing), 
 why should he enlarge the area of the shameful secret? 
 
 When Fenella returned (saying, as she came downstairs, how 
 beautiful her room was and how proud she would be of it) he 
 took her out to the carriage. 
 
 " Do you remember," she whispered (she had recovered her 
 gay spirits, the coachman was on the box), " do you remember the 
 first time you saw me ofi" from here ? " 
 
 He nodded and tried to smile. 
 
 " I was too bashful to shake hands and you were too shy to 
 look at me." 
 
 And being seated in the carriage and the door closed on her, 
 she said, 
 
 " By the way, wouldn't you like to drive over with me to Mrs. 
 Quayle if I brought you home again? " 
 
 " No, no ... . I mean . . . . " 
 
 She laughed merrily. " Oh, very well ! You've refused me 
 again! I'll remember it. Sir." 
 
 After the carriage had disappeared at the turn of the drive, 
 Stowell went up to his room, shut the door behind him and covered 
 his face in his hands. 
 
 Fenella hunting him dov^n! Blindly, unconsciously, inno- 
 cently, while urging him, entreating him, almost compelling him 
 to sit on the case. The woman he loved and who loved him was 
 trying to destroy him. Was this to be his punishment? 
 
 Mrs. Quayle? No, she would say nothing. If she thought it 
 would injure his mother's son no power on earth would prevail 
 upon her to speak. But sooner or later, by one means or other, 
 Fenella would find out, and then .... 
 
 " God be merciful to me, a sinner ! " he moaned, smothering 
 the sound of the words behind his hands. 
 
 Could he sit in judgment on Bessie CoUister's case with all the 
 forces of the defence (inspired by FeneUa) directed towards 
 branding the Judge as the real criminal Impossible ! Yet what 
 could he do? 
 
 At length an idea occurred to him. He would go up to Gov- 
 ernment House, tell the whole truth to the Governor and ask to be 
 relieved of his duty. It would be a terrible ordeal, but there was 
 no escape from it. 
 
 " Yes, I will go up to the Governor in the morning." 
 
THE JUDGE AND THE MAN 251 
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 
 
 THE JUDGE AND THE MAN 
 
 " Helloa ! Glad to see you about again. Fenella has gone 
 off to the south of the island somewhere, but she'll be home 
 for luncheon. Take a cigar? No? Not smoking yet? I 
 must anyway." 
 
 " I've come to see you on a serious matter. Sir," said Stowell — 
 he felt his lips trembling. 
 
 "So?" 
 
 The Governor glanced up quickly, charged his pipe and then 
 settled himself to listen. 
 
 " You will remember the story I told you — about the man 
 who had promised to marry a girl and then fallen in love with 
 somebody else? " 
 
 " Perfectly." 
 
 Stowell paused a moment. His lips became pale and his 
 hands contracted. 
 
 " Well? " 
 
 " That was my own story. Sir." 
 
 There was another moment of silence. Stowell had expected 
 an exclamation of surprise, a clang of astonishment, but the 
 Governor's face was still to the fire and the only sound he made 
 was the swiveUing of the pipe between his teeth. 
 
 " You advised me to break off the engagement and I did so." 
 
 " What was the result? " 
 
 " The girl was relieved." 
 
 "Relieved?" 
 
 " Yes, because she, too, had in the meantime fallen in love 
 with somebody else — ^my friend Gell." 
 
 " How fortunate! " 
 
 " It seemed so at first. I thought Providence had stepped in 
 to help her out. But Fate has kept a terrible reckoning. Sir." 
 
 " What has happened? " 
 
 " The girl has committed a crime. She is in Castle Rushen 
 awaiting her trial for the murder of her new-born child." 
 
 " The woman CoUister? " 
 
 " Yes. And now I'm a Judge and in ordinary course it is my 
 duty to try her." 
 
 There was another period of silence, broken only by the rapid 
 puffing of the Governor's pipe. 
 
 " But that's not all. Sir. Being in this frightful position 
 everything is tempting me to corrupt Justice. First, my natural 
 
252 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 desire to influence the trial in favour of the girl — ^perhaps to get 
 her off altogether. Next, pity for her poor mother who has been 
 pleading for mercy. Then, friendship for Gell who has been 
 begging me to try the case because the old Statute is severe and 
 my colleague cruel. And last of all the step-father of the girl who 
 has been trying to intimidate me." 
 
 "Well.?" 
 
 " I think you will see it is impossible for me to sit on a case in 
 which my private interest and my public duty conflict — Utterly 
 impossible. It would be against all usage, all justice." 
 
 The Governor removed his pipe. His face had become cold 
 and hard. " You speak of your colleague — have you done any- 
 thing with him.? " 
 
 " Yes. I've asked him to sit instead of me." 
 
 " What if he cannot ? " 
 
 " Then I will ask you. Sir, to send for another Judge from 
 across the water." 
 
 Stowell had struggled through to the end, although perspira- 
 tion had been breaking out on his forehead. When he had finished 
 the Governor sat for some time without speaking. 
 
 Obscure motives were operating within him. In the depths of 
 his mind (scarcely known to himself) he was asking himself, 
 " How will all this, if I allow it to go farther, affect Fenella? 
 Will it stop her marriage, disturb her happiness, destroy her life .? " 
 But on the surface of his mind he was only aware of considerations 
 of public welfare. He was irritated by what had occurred. It 
 was an impediment in his path which he wished to kick out of 
 the way. 
 
 He rose, laid his pipe on the mantelpiece, and standing with 
 his back to the fire and his hands behind him, his chin firm and his 
 mouth set hard, he said, with sudden energy, 
 
 " Now listen to me. I always knew that was your own story." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " What I did not know was that any harm had been done. 
 Did you? " 
 
 " Indeed no." 
 
 "Did the girl?" 
 
 " It is incredible." 
 
 " Do you know that she has killed her child ? " 
 
 " Not certainly. She denies it, and the evidence is not too 
 convincing." 
 
 " Do you know that she ever had a child ? " 
 
 " No .... I can't say .... She denies that also, and 
 the medical testimony is far from conclusive." 
 
THE JUDGE AND THE MAN 253 
 
 " Do you know — are you satisfied — ^that if she had a child, 
 and killed it, the child was yours? " 
 
 Stowell, with a gulp, stammered something about Bessie hav- 
 ing been a good girl before he met her. 
 
 " But do you know anything? " 
 
 "Well, no ... . I can't say . . . . " 
 
 " Then, good heavens, what are you thinking about? Knowing 
 nothing, nothing really, you are acting, and asking me to act, on 
 a cloud of conjectures. I'll not do it." 
 
 Stowell drew his breath with a gasp of relief. It was just as 
 if he had been living for days in the stuffy atmosphere of a sealed 
 room and somebody had broken open a window. His head was 
 down; the Governor touched his shoulder. 
 
 " My friend, you are doing that poor girl a cruel injustice." 
 
 Stowell was startled and looked up. 
 
 " In your own mind you are finding her guilty before she has 
 been tried." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " You are doing yourself an injustice, too. Even if the girl 
 committed this crime — I say if — you are not responsible for it." 
 
 Stowell began to stammer again. " I .... I did wrong in 
 the first instance. Sir, and nothing but wrong . . . . " 
 
 But the Governor said sharply, " Of course you did wrong in 
 the first instance. But that has nothing to do with the wrong 
 which she (if she is guilty) has done since. It can't be supposed 
 that you had any sympathy with her act, can it? " 
 
 "God forbid!" 
 
 " Did you desert her ? Did you leave her to the mercy of the 
 world? Has she ever been in want? Was she in any danger of 
 being unable to provide for her offspring when it came? " 
 
 " No .... I cannot say . . . . " 
 
 " Then what folly to think you are responsible for what she did 
 in taking the life of her child — if she did take it. No, other facts 
 and motives operated with the girl. And whatever those facts and 
 motives were, you, so far as I can see, had nothing to do with them 
 — nothing whatever." 
 
 Stowell's pulse was beating high. He tried to say something 
 about his moral responsibility, but again the Governor cut 
 him short. 
 
 " Your moral responsibility ! " he said, with a ring of sarcasm. 
 " I'm sick of this sentimental talk about moral responsibility — 
 man's responsibility for the conduct of woman, and all the rest of 
 it. The person who commits the crime is the criminal — that's the 
 only foundation of law and order." 
 
254 TEM MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Then you think. Sir," said Stowell, " that since I .... " 
 
 " I think," said the Governor, " that the whole thing is unfor- 
 tunate, damnably unfortunate, but since you are not responsible 
 for the girl's crime, if she committed a crime at all, and knew 
 nothing about it, and have no sympathy with it, you ought to go 
 on doing your duty. Why shouldn't you? .... Interested.^ 
 Of course you are interested. In a little community like this a 
 Judge is nearly always interested. Isn't that wihat your Deem- 
 ster's oath is intended to provide for ? " 
 
 Stowell muttered something about being afraid, and again the 
 Grovernor caught him up. 
 
 "Afraid.'' What are you afraid of .'' The public.'' Doesn't it 
 occur to you that the only risk you run in that direction is not the 
 risk of sitting on this case but of not sitting on it.'' There must 
 be people who have seen you coming here this morning, and if 
 you are not in Court on the appointed day, aren't they likely to 
 ask why .'' " 
 
 " There's GeU . . . . " 
 
 " Certainly there's Gell .... When the marriage was 
 broken off you didn't tell him anything, did you? " 
 
 Stowell shook his head. " How could I ? " 
 
 " Yes, how could you? And now he wishes you to sit, and, if 
 you don't, isn't he likely to suspect the reason? " 
 
 " There .... there's Baldromma." 
 
 " That wind-bag ! Likely to make a cry against the adminis- 
 tration of justice, is he? Well, the surest way to squelch such 
 people is to walk over them." 
 
 " There's the girl herself." 
 
 " Of course, there's the girl herself. But if she is guilty and 
 has held her tongue thus far, she'll probably continue to do so." 
 
 The Governor made a turn across the room and then drew 
 up sharply. 
 
 " There's myself, too. I suppose I deserve some con- 
 sideration? " 
 
 " Indeed yes." 
 
 " Then go on with your duty — that's all I ask of you." 
 
 With a thrill of relief Stowell rose to go. But oh, misery of 
 the heart, he had kept his most searching objection to the last. 
 
 " There is somebody else, your Excellency." 
 
 " Who else ? " asked the Governor, laying down the pipe he 
 had taken up. 
 
 " I hate to mention her in this connection — Fenella." 
 
 " Fenella? Why, what on earth has Fenella . . . . " 
 
 And then Stowell told him. 
 
TBE JUD&E AND THE MAN 255 
 
 Having interested herself in this case, Fenella was hunting 
 down the guilty man that he might be exposed and punished — 
 punished by public obloquy if he could not be punished by law. 
 
 "If she finds him before the trial how C£in I possibly sit? 
 Whatever happens it will be coloured by her knowledge of the 
 truth. If the girl is acquitted she will think I have helped her 
 to escape punishment in order to salve my conscience or cover my 
 share in her crime. And if she is condemned what happiness can 
 there be for either of us after that? " 
 
 He had spoken with emotion, but the Governor, who had 
 recovered from his surprise, replied impatiently, 
 
 " Aren't you crossing the bridge before you come to the river? " 
 
 Stowell made no answer, and at the next moment there was 
 the sound of carriage wheels coming up the drive. 
 
 " It's Fenella," said the Governor, looking out of the window. 
 " I'll ask you to say nothing to her about the subject of our con- 
 versation. And listen " (he was re-lighting his pipe and puffing 
 at it with lips that smacked angrily; Stowell's hand was on the 
 door), " don't let my girl make a damned fool of you." 
 
 II 
 
 " Victor, I have something to tell you," said Fenella. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 They were in the library. She was looking feverish; he was 
 feeling ashamed, embarrassed and afraid. 
 
 " I have found out who was the friend of that poor girl." 
 
 He gazed at her without speaking. 
 
 " It will be a great shock to you — ^it was Alick Gell." 
 
 "No, no!" 
 
 " I'm sorry, dear. I knew you would be unable to believe it. 
 But it's true — ^terribly true." 
 
 Mrs. Quayle, the evening before, had said very little. Nobody 
 had called to see the girl while she stayed at her house, and nobody 
 had come to take her away. She, herself, had seen her off by the 
 train, and all the girl had told her was that she was going to a 
 school at Derby-Haven. 
 
 " But that was enough for me," said Fenella. " This morning 
 I went down to Derby-Haven and found there was only one school 
 there. It is kept by two maiden ladies named Brown. Simple 
 old things, very timid and old-fashioned. They were thrown into 
 terrible commotion by my call, and having read the reports in the 
 newspapers they were at first afraid to say anything. But after 
 I had promised that they should not be mixed up in the matter in 
 
256 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 any way, I got them to speak. Mr. Alick Gell had brought the 
 girl to their house. He had paid for her, and they had always 
 looked upon him as her intended husband. So it's a certainty, you 
 see — a shocking certainty." 
 
 Stowell was breathless. 
 " But my dear Fenella," he said, " this is a mistake. You are 
 drawing a false inference . . . . " 
 
 But Fenella only shook her head. 
 
 " Yes. I knew your loyalty to your friend would compel you 
 to say so. But what do you think.'' I have since found that the 
 fact is common knowledge." 
 
 Returning in the train she had occupied a compartment with 
 two men- — the strangest looking creatures she had ever seen in a 
 first-class carriage. One of them turned out to be the girl's step- 
 father and the other a member of the House of Keys. 
 
 " Csesar Qualtrough .i* " 
 
 " Caesar? Yes, that was the name. They talked about the 
 forthcoming trial and didn't seem to mind my hearing them — 
 perhaps wished me to. The step-father (he spoke as if the whole 
 case had been got up to disgrace him) was complaining that he had 
 not been called by either side. But no matter, he would force 
 himself upon the Court and expose the real criminal — the 
 Speaker's son. It was all a trick. But it should not succeed. He 
 would put the saddle on the right horse, he would. And then they 
 talked about you." 
 
 " What .... what about me? " 
 
 " That the report of your being too ill to sit was a lie. You 
 were not ill at all and never had been — the step-father knew bet- 
 ter. You were merely shirking your duty to save your friend in 
 some way. But that trick shouldn't succeed either, or the people 
 should know what Judges in the Isle of Man were. So you see 
 you must sit on this case, dear — if you are fit for it. You can't 
 afford to have it said that you have sacrificed your duty as a Judge 
 to your personal interests. At your first Court, too." 
 
 Stowell was in torture. In spite of the Governor's warning, an 
 almost overpowering impulse came to him to confess, to make a 
 clean breast of everything, there and then, and once for all. 
 
 " Fenella," he began (his breath was coming and goihg in 
 gusts), " who knows if the guilty man is Gell? It may be some- 
 body else." 
 
 " Who else can it be? " 
 
 He tried to say " It is I," but hesitated — he could not shatter 
 in a word the whole world he lived in. At the next moment she 
 
TEE JUDGE AND THE MAN 25T 
 
 was praising his fidelity, which would not allow him to think ill 
 of his life-long friend. 
 
 " But he has no such delicacy/' she said. " Knowing what he 
 knows he is still going to defend the girl, and that's equal to 
 defending himself, isn't it? How shocking!" 
 
 Stowell's shame at his moral cowardice reached the point of 
 abasement, and he dropped his head. Then, carried away by her 
 own pleading, Fenella put her arms about his neck, tenderly and 
 caressingly, and told him she knew well what a hard thing she was 
 asking him to do- — to sit in judgment on his friend also, for that 
 was what it would come to. But she would love him for ever if 
 he would do it. It would be like the crown of all her hopes, the 
 fulfilment of all she had worked for, if in some way {he would 
 know best how) a poor girl who had sinned and suffered should 
 have mercy shown to her, and not be left alone in her shame, but 
 have the partner of her sin (no matter who he was or how near he 
 came) standing side by side with her. 
 
 There was a moment of silence. Stowell was like a man grop- 
 ing in the dark of a black midnight. At length a light seemed 
 to dawn on him. If he sat on this case he could save an innocent 
 man at all events. 
 
 " You mill sit, will you not? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 And then she kissed him. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Back at Ballamoar, Stowell found the Deemster's clerk wait- 
 ing for him. 
 
 It had taken Joshua three days to see Deemster Taubman, and 
 when at length he was admitted to the big man's presence he had 
 found him in bed, with his shaggy head and unshaven face on the 
 pillow and his lower extremities through the legs of a cane- 
 bottomed chair which supported his bed-clothes. 
 
 " What? What's that? " he had roared. " Sit at the General 
 Gaol? Go back to your master and tell him I'm lying here in the 
 tortures of the damned, not able to put a foot to the ground." 
 
 Stowell drew a long breath. Fate had spoken its last word ! It 
 was now certain that he must sit on the case of Bessie CoUister. 
 
 His spirits rose and he began to see things more clearly. Had 
 he not exaggerated his own importance in this affair? He had 
 been thinking of his part ir the forthcoming trial as if the issue of 
 Bessie's fate depended upon him. But not so. It depended upon 
 the Jury. Guilty or not Guilty, — he had nothing to do with that. 
 17 
 
258 TBS MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Tttierefore, in the deeper sense, Bessie would not be tried by him at 
 all. Why had he been frightening himself? 
 
 Had a Judge, then, no power, no voice, no influence? Thank 
 Grod, yes ! It was for the Judge to direct the jury on questions of 
 law, to see that they had a right imderstanding of it and that their 
 verdict corresponded with the evidence. What an important func- 
 tion — especially in a case like this ! What a mercy old Taubman 
 was unable to sit on it ! 
 
 He thought again of Bessie's position. Pitiful, most pitiful! 
 But the law was no Juggernaut, intended to crush the life out of 
 a poor unfortunate girl. Mercifully administered it was rather her 
 Sanctuary to which she might fly for refuge. And it should be 
 mercifully administered. 
 
 Why not ? Good heavens, why not ? What wrong would it be 
 to temper Justice with mercy — even to strain the law a little in the 
 prisoner's favour? No one but himself would know. And if it 
 were suspected that he was showing favour to the prisoner, people 
 would consider him deserving of praise rather than censure for 
 trying to snatch a young and helpless creature from the clutches 
 of a cruel old Statute. 
 
 Besides, was it not one of the higher traditions of the bench 
 that the Judge was first Counsel for the accused ? Judges had not 
 always acted on that principle. Some of them, in times past, had 
 hunted their wretched prisoners gallowswards with gibes. Taub- 
 man was still like that. He thought sympathy with such women 
 as Bessie ColUster was sentimental weakness, that to deal merci- 
 fully with them was to encourage them, and thereby do a wrong 
 to public morality. 
 
 " God bless me, yes ! I know Taubman," he told himself. 
 
 Then he thought of Gell. Whatever Bessie might be, Gell was 
 innocent, and after the girl herself the greatest sufferer. Should 
 he suffer further from an unfounded suspicion ? God forbid ! It 
 would be his duty as Judge to see that no blustering person in 
 Court bellowed accusations which, once out, might stick to an 
 innocent man for the rest of his natural life. 
 
 After that he thought of himself. The only risk he ran was 
 from Bessie's despair. If Gell were falsely accused she might 
 break silence and tell the truth to save him. What a vista ! Bessie, 
 Gell, himself, Fenella! But no, that should not be! The law 
 was no thumb-screw; a law-court was no torture-chamber. It 
 would be his duty as Judge to protect the girl against any form 
 of legal provocation. ■' ^ 
 
 Last of all, with a thriU of the heart> he thought of Fenella. 
 She had drawn him on, constrained and' Compelled him to promise 
 
THE TRIAL 259 
 
 to sit on Bessie's case. But she had only wished, out of the great- 
 ness of her pity, to see that the poor girl should have a just trial. 
 She should too ! It would be his duty as Judge to see to that. 
 
 " Good Lord, yes ! And what a mercy the case is not coming 
 before Taubman." 
 
 Thus in the scorching fire of his temptation he tried to stand 
 erect in the belief that he had sunk himself in his high office — 
 that he was about to become the champion jind first servant of 
 Justice. But well he knew in his secret heart that in the fierce 
 struggle which had been going on within him between the Judge 
 and the Man, the Man had conquered. 
 
 During the next two days he worked day and night in the 
 library, looking up authorities 'and verifying references. On the 
 third day he set out in his car for Castletown. Janet saw him off 
 in the mist of early morning. He was very pale; he had eaten 
 scarcely any breakfast. She looked anxiously after him until he 
 disappeared behind the trees. There was the odour of fresh earth 
 in the air and the rooks were calling. It was like an echo from 
 the past. 
 
 When he arrived at Castle Eushen there was a crowd at the 
 gate, and all hats were off to him, as they had been to his father, 
 when he passed through the Judge's private entrance. 
 
 Inside the courtyard, where the steps go up to the public part 
 of the Court-house, there was another crowd and a certain com- 
 motion. The police were pushing back a tumultuous person who 
 in a raucous voice was demanding to be admitted although the 
 place was full. 
 
 It was Dan Baldromma. 
 
 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-irwo of them bad 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 impor- 
 
260 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 tance 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 reawly for the Court. 
 
 " Patrick Kelly ! Charles Quiggin ! Nancy Kegeen ! John 
 Corlett ! Caesar 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 recon- 
 ciled 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. Inspec- 
 tors 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 
 
THE TRIAL 261 
 
 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 : 
 
 " / do hereby fence this Court in the name of our Sovereign 
 Lord the King. I charge that no person shall quarrel, barvl 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 shufiSing 
 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 advo- 
 cates and directly in front of the bench. 
 
262 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 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 imme- 
 diately. 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 appear- 
 ance of one w'ho 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 pre- 
 ceptibly 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 spec- 
 tators 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. 
 
THE TRIAL 263 
 
 wilfully and of your malice aforethought, you did kiU and mur- 
 der a certain male child, contrary to the form of the Statute in suoh 
 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 GuUty." 
 
 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 plsice 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 tide girl's face. What a scoundrel 
 he had been! 
 
 From that moment a whirl of confused emotions had held pos- 
 session 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 
 
264 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 fixed on his face — Alick Gell and Fenella. At that sight a ter- 
 rible 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 las 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 conse- 
 quences 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 
 
THE TRIAL 206 
 
 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 
 
266 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 had been reaching forward, dropped back, and Gell's pale face 
 was smiling. 
 
 The next to be called was Dr. Clucas. His hands were twitch- 
 ing land 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 ob- 
 viously 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 Skillicome. 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 ? 
 
TEE TRIAL 267 
 
 Colic they were calling it, but -wntching 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 your- 
 self. 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 wiU, too, for if ypur father, 
 the Spaker . . . . " 
 
 The Attorney-General rose in alarm. " Is it suggested by 
 these questions that the witness has an animus against the pris- 
 oner'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 tlien 
 took her in hand himself. 
 
268 THE MABTEB OF MAN 
 
 " 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 
 £er 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 WiU SkUlicorne. 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 yon 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." 
 
THE TRIAL »69 
 
 " Mr. Skillicorne," said the Deemster, " you attach importance 
 to your belief, I see." 
 
 The old man drew himself up, and answered in his preach- 
 ing 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 hos- 
 pital 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 be- 
 came 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 " 
 
270 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " 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 suflScient, my col- 
 league 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, there- 
 fore 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 eafth." 
 
 His head dropped; he felt like a traitor. 
 
 Ill 
 
 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 pre- 
 ceptibly, was not to be put out. 
 
 The witness he called first was Mrs. CoUister. 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. 
 
THE TRIAL 271 
 
 " 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 con- 
 stable 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 trem.ulous voice which the Deemster 
 found deeply aifecting. 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 Gall, " 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 gentle- 
 man was putting on her." 
 
 " Is the prisoner your husbjind'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, per- 
 haps 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 
 
272 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Inspector of Police (who was already laying hold of the inter- 
 rupter) that it was the husband of the witness. 
 
 " A respectable man's character is being sworn »way," 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 any- 
 body attempts to brawl here . . . . " 
 
 " Then let me be sworn. I'm only a plain Manxman, blood 
 and bone, but I can tell the trutib 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, Sjr.'' 
 
 " 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 TRIAL 273 
 
 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 
 aacied 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. CoUister, 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 advo- 
 cates 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: 
 18 
 
274 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Your Honourj I ask your protection against this out- 
 rageous 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. CoUister's silence he was not afraid now. He was going 
 to play his la«t 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 BaUifF, 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 wihispering 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. 
 
THE TRIAL 275 
 
 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 for- 
 ward, 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 — flaying 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 Attor- 
 new 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 
 
276 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 present of his own on Bessie's last birthday, and' his great faith i« 
 the girl was breaking down, yet in a husky voice he said, 
 
 " Give her time, your Honour. She may have some 
 esplanation." 
 
 The Deemster signified assent, and then Gell, stepping closer 
 to the witness-box, said, 
 
 " Be calm and think again. Don't answer hastily. Every- 
 thing 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 tor- 
 ture 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 Attor- 
 ney-General has just disclosed, nothing she has said in her agita- 
 tion to-day shall prejudice what she may say to-morrow." 
 
 He paused for a moment and then (with diflSculty 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, 
 
 " Wliatever the facts in this luihappy 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." 
 
THE TRIAL 277 
 
 IV 
 
 The Judges, the advocates and the spectators were gone, and 
 Gell was alone in the Court-hoiise. 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'U wait here for you." 
 
 In the Deemster's room the Governor was putting on his mili- 
 tary 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 
 tiirough 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 pac- 
 ing 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 
 
278 THE MASTER OP MAN 
 
 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." 
 
 " FeneUa.? " 
 
 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. 
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE 
 
 THE TWO WOMEN THE TWO MEN 
 
 On being taken back to her cell Bessie had burst into a fi, 
 of hysteria. 
 
 " The brutes ! They're only trying to catch me out that they 
 may kill me. Why don't they do it then ? Why don't they finish 
 me? This waiting is the worst." 
 
 Her face was blue with rage, her voice was coarse and husky, 
 her mouth was full of ugly and vulgar words — all the traces of 
 her common upbringing coming uppermost. 
 
 At length, out of breath and exhausted, she broke into sobs. 
 This quietened her and after a while she asked what had become 
 of her mother. 
 
 Fenella, who was alone with her (the woman warder having 
 
TBE TWO WOMEN— THE TWO MEN 279 
 
 gone home ill), answered that some good women had carried her 
 mother away and were going to take care of her. 
 
 " And where is .... " 
 
 " Mr. Gell? Upstairs. He sent me down to speak to you." 
 
 " I won't speak to anyone. They're all alike. They're only 
 torturing me." 
 
 FeneUa reproved the girl tenderly. Could she not see 
 that the Deemster himself was trying to help her? He had ad- 
 journed the Court to give her another chance, and if she could 
 only explain away the evidence of the scarf .... 
 
 " I won't explain anything. Why can't you leave me be? " 
 
 " You heard what the Deemster said, Bessie? Tell the truth; 
 the whole truth; it will be best for you; best for everybody." 
 
 After that Bessie became calmer, and then FeneUa (little 
 knowing what she was doing for herself) pleaded with the girl 
 to confess. 
 
 " I think I understand," she said. " Sometimes a girl loves 
 a man so much that she cannot deny him anything. Thousands 
 and thousands of women have been like that. Not the worst 
 women either. But the dark hour comes when the man does not 
 marry her — perhaps cannot — and then she tries to cover up every- 
 thing. And that's your case, isn't it? " ^ 
 
 " Don't ask me. I can't tell you," cried Bessie. 
 
 FeneUa tried again, still more tenderly. 
 
 " And sometimes a girl who has done wrong tries to shield 
 somebody else — somebody who is as guilty as herself, perhaps 
 guiltier. Thousands of women have done that too, ever since the 
 world began. They shouldn't, though. A bad man counts on a 
 woman's silence. She should speak out, no matter who may be 
 shamed. And that's what you are going to do, aren't you? " 
 
 But stiU Bessie cried, " I can't! I can't! " 
 
 " Don't be afraid," said FeneUa. " The Deemster is not like 
 some other judges. He has such pity for a girl in your position 
 that he wiU do what is right by her whoever the man may be." 
 
 " Oh, why do you torture me? " cried Bessie. 
 
 " I don't mean to do that," said FeneUa. " But a girl has to 
 think of her own position in the long run, and it's only right she 
 should know what it is. If she is charged with a terrible crime, 
 and there is evidence against her which she cannot gainsay, the 
 law has the power to punish her — ^to inflict the most terrible pun- 
 ishment, perhaps. Have you thought of that, Bessie ? " 
 
 Bessie shuddered and laid hold of FeneUa by both hands. 
 
 " On the other hand if she can explain .... if she can say 
 that her child was born dead and that she merely concealed the 
 
280 TSB MASTER OP MAS 
 
 birth of it, or that she killed it by accident, perhaps, when she was 
 alone and didn't know what she was doing . . . . " 
 
 Bessie was breathing rapidly, and Fenella (still iinconscious 
 of the fearful game the unseen powers were playing with her) 
 followed up her advantage. 
 
 " You can trust the Deemster, Bessie. He will be merciful 
 to a girl who has stood silent in her shame to save the honour of 
 the man she loves — I'm sure he will. And the Jury too, when 
 they see that you did not intend to kill your child, they may .... 
 who knows? .... they may even acquit you altogether." 
 
 Bessie was silent now, and Fenella could see, in the half dark- 
 ness of the cell, that the girl's big pathetic eyes were gazing 
 up at her. 
 
 " And then the people who have been thinking hard of you, 
 because you have deceived them, will soften to you when they see 
 that what you did, however wrong it was and even criminal, was 
 done perhaps for somebody you loved better than yourself." 
 
 Suddenly Bessie dropped ta her knees at FeneUa's feet 
 and cried, 
 
 " Very well, I will confess. Yes, it's true. I had a child, and 
 I .... I killed it. But I didn't mean to — God knows I didn't." 
 
 " Tell me everything," said Fenella. And then, burying her 
 face in FeneUa's lap and clinging to her, Bessie told her story, 
 mentioning no names, but concealing and excusing nothing. 
 
 Before she had come to an end, Fenella, who had been saying 
 " Yes " and " Yes," and asking short and eager questions (the two 
 women speaking in whispers as if afraid that the dark walls 
 would hear), felt herself seized by a great terror. 
 
 " Then it was not Mr. Gell who took you into his rooms when 
 your father shut you out? " 
 
 " No, no ! Would to God it had been ! " 
 
 " Then who was it? " 
 
 " Don't ask me that. I cannot answer you." 
 
 " Who was it? Tell me, tell me." 
 
 "I can't! I can't!" 
 
 " Was it in Ramsey — his chambers ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Is he? . . . . is he anything to me? " 
 
 Bessie dropped her head still deeper into FeneUa's lap and 
 made no answer. 
 
 " Is he ? " said Fenella, and in her gathering terror, getting no 
 reply, she lifted Bessie's head and looked searchingly into her 
 face, as if to probe her soul. 
 
THE TWO WOMEN— TEE TWO MEN 281 
 
 At the next moment the dreadful truth had fallen on her. The 
 girl's fellow-sinner, the man she had been hunting down to punish 
 him, to shame him, to expose him to public obloquy, was Victor 
 Stowell himself! 
 
 At the first shock of the revelation the woman in Fenella 
 asserted itself — the simple, natural, deceived and outraged woman. 
 This girl had gone before her ! This common, uneducated creature 
 of the fields and the farmyard! For one cruel moment she had a 
 vision of Bessie in Stowell's arms. This was the face he had 
 loved ! These were the lips he had kissed ! And she had thought 
 he had loved her only — ^never having loved anybody else ! 
 
 A feeling of disgust came over her. The girl had not even 
 had the excuse of caring for StoweU. She had been thinking 
 merely of a way of escape from the tyrannies of her step-father. 
 Or perhaps an admixture of sheer animal instinct had impelled 
 her. How degrading it all was ! 
 
 Bessie, who had begun to realise what she had done, tried to 
 take her hand, but Fenella drew back and cried, 
 
 " Don't touch me ! " 
 
 All the thoughts of years about woman as the victim seemed 
 to be burnt up in an instant in the furnace of her outraged feelings. 
 An almost unconquerable impulse came to leave Bessie to her fate. 
 Let her pay the penalty of her crime ! Why shouldn't she .'' 
 
 But after a while a great pity for the girl came over her. If 
 she had sinned she had also suiFered. If she was there, in prison, 
 it was only because she had been trying in her ignorant way to 
 wipe out her fault. 
 
 But she herself .... her hopes gone, her love wasted .... 
 
 Fenella bursted into a flood of tears. And then Bessie (the 
 two women had changed places now) began to comfort her. 
 
 " I'm sorry. I didn't think what I was doing. Don't cry." 
 
 At the next moment they were in each other's arms, crying like 
 children — ^two poor ship-broken women on the everlasting ocean 
 of man's changeless lust. 
 
 Bessie was the first to recover. She was full of hope and 
 expectation, and visions of the future. Now that she had con- 
 fessed everything the Deemster would tell the Jury to let her off, 
 and then Alick would forgive her also. 
 
 " He will forgive me, will he not? " 
 
 She was like a child again, and Fenella found a cruel relief 
 in humouring her. 
 
 " Yes, yes," she answered. 
 
 " When I leave this place I'm going to be so good," said 
 Bessie. " I will make him such a happy life. We'll be marrried 
 
282 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 immediately — ^by Bishop's licence, you know — and then leave the 
 Isle of Man and go to America. He often spoke of that, and it 
 will be best .... After all this trouble it will be best, don't 
 you think so? " 
 
 " No doubt, no doubt," said Fenella. 
 
 At length she remembered that Gell would be waiting for her. 
 She must go to him. When she reached the corridor she paused, 
 wondering what she was to say and how she was to say it. While 
 she stood there she heard sounds from the cell behind her. Bessie 
 was singing. 
 
 Meantime Gell had been fighting his own battle. The black 
 thought which had come hurtling down on him at Derby Haven, 
 when he first read the letter which Bessie had left behind her, was 
 torturing him again. It was about Stowell, and to crush it he had 
 to call up the memory of the long line of good and generous things 
 that Stowell had done for him all the way up since he was a boy. 
 
 When at last he saw Fenella approaching he searched her face 
 for a ray of hope, but his heart sank at the sight of it. 
 
 "Wen?" 
 
 " She has confessed." 
 
 "She had a child .?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " It was born dead? " 
 
 " No, she killed it." 
 
 " God in heaven ! " said Gell, and it seemed to Fenella that at 
 that moment the man's heart had broken. 
 
 She knew she ought to say more, but she could not do so — 
 nothing being of consequence except the one terrible fact of the 
 man's betrayal. 
 
 " God in heaven ! " said Gell again, and he turned to leave her. 
 
 " What are you going to do in the morning ? " 
 
 " I don't know .... yet." 
 
 " Where are you going to now? " 
 
 " To .... Ballamoar." 
 
 Again she knew that she ought to say more, but again she 
 could not. 
 
 Gell was making for the gate, and Fenella, bankrupt in heart 
 herself, wanted to comfort him. 
 
 " Mr. GeU," she said, " I have been doing you a great injus- 
 tice. I ask you to forgive me." 
 
 With his hand on the bolt he turned his broken face to her. 
 
 " That's nothing — nothing now," he said. 
 
 And again she heard " God in heaven ! " as the gate closed 
 behind him. 
 
TBE TWO WOMEN— THE TWO MEN 283 
 
 / 
 
 II 
 
 " Ah, here you are, dear ! " 
 
 It was Janet who had heard the hum of Stowell's car on the 
 drive and had come hurrying out to meet him. 
 
 " You've had a tiring day — I can see that," she said, as she 
 poured out a cup of tea for him. " Ah, these high positions ! 
 ' There's nothing to be got without being paid for,' as your father 
 used to say." 
 
 To escape from Janet's solicitude and to tire himself out so 
 that he might have a chance of sleeping that night, he walked 
 down to the shore. 
 
 A storm was rising. The gulls were flying inland and their 
 white wings were mingling with the black ones of the rooks. The 
 fierce sky to the south, the cold grey of the sea to the north, the 
 bleak church tower on the stark headland, looking like a blinded 
 lighthouse— they suited better with his mood. 
 
 Fenella ! She must know everything by this time. How was 
 he to meet her eyes in the morning? 
 
 Gell ! He, too, must know everything now. How every inno- 
 cent thing he had done to help his friend would look like cunning 
 bribery and cruel treachery ! 
 
 It was a lie to say that a sin could be concealed. An evil act 
 once done could never be undone; it could never be hidden away. 
 A man might carry his sin out to sea, and bury it in the deepest 
 part of the deep, but some day it would come scouring up before 
 a storm as the broken seaweed came, to lie open and naked on 
 the beach. 
 
 The sky darkened and he turned back. On the way home he 
 met Robbie Creer, and they had to shout to each other above the 
 fury of the wind. The farmer had been over to the Nappin (the 
 fields above the Point) and found hidden fissures in the soil three 
 feet deep. They woidd lose land before morning. 
 
 At dinner Janet did her best to make things cheerful. There 
 was the sweet home atmosphere — ^the wood fire with its odour of 
 resin and gorse, the snow-white table-cloth, the silver candlesticks, 
 all the old-fashioned daintiness. But Stowell was preoccupied 
 and hardly listened to Janet's chattering. So she went early to 
 her room, saying she was sure he wished to be alone — ^his father 
 always did, during the adjournment of a serious case. His 
 father again ! How her devotion to his father drove the iron into 
 his soul! 
 
 It was late and the rain had begun to slash the window-panes 
 when he heard the front door hell ringing. After a few moments 
 
284 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 be heard it ringing again, more loudly and insistently. Nobody 
 answered it. The household must be asleep. 
 
 Then came a hurried knocking at the window of the dining- 
 room and a voice, which was like the wind itself become articulate, 
 crying out of the darkness, 
 
 "Let me in! " 
 
 It was Gell. For the first time in his life Stowell felt a spasm 
 of physical fear. But he remembered something which Gell had 
 said at the door of the railway carriage in Douglas on the day of 
 the trial of the Peel fisherman (" I should have killed the other 
 man "), and that strengthened him. Anything was better than 
 the torture of a hidden sin — anything ! 
 
 " Go back to the door — ^I'll open it," he called through the 
 closed window, and then he walked to the porch. 
 
 His heart was beating hard. He thought he knew what was 
 coming. But when GeU entered the house he was not the man 
 Stowell had expected — with flaming eyes and passionate voice — 
 but a poor, broken, irresolute creature. His hair was disordered, 
 his step was weak and shuffling, and he was stretching out his 
 nervous hands on coming into the light as if stiU walking in 
 the darkness. 
 
 " I had to come and tell you. She's guilty. She has con- 
 fessed," he said. 
 
 And then he collapsed into a chair and broke into pitiful 
 moaning. It was too cruel. He could have taken the girl's word 
 against the world, yet she had deceived him. 
 
 " Did she say .... who . . . . " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "No?" 
 
 " I didn't ask. Some miserable farm-hand, I suppose — some 
 brute, some animal. Damn him, whoever he is ! Damn him ! 
 Damn him to the devil and hell ! " 
 
 Stowell felt a boundless relief, yet a sense of sickening 
 duplicity. 
 
 " But what matter about the man ? " said Gell. " It's the girl 
 who has deceived me. I daresay I'm not the first either. Perhaps 
 her step-father didn't turn her out for nothing. There may have 
 been something to say for the old scoundrel." 
 
 Choking with hypocrisy, Stowell found himself pleading for 
 the girl. Perhaps .... who could say? .... perhaps she 
 had been more sinned against than sinning. 
 
 " Then why didn't she tell me ? " said Gell. His voice was 
 like a wail. 
 
TEE TWO WOMEN— THE TWO MEN 286 
 
 " Who can say . . . . " (Stowell felt a throb in his throat and 
 was speaking with difficulty), " who can say she wasn't trying to 
 save you pain .... knowing how you believed in her and cared 
 for her.?" 
 
 " But if she had only told me," said Gall. " If she had only 
 been straight with me ! " 
 
 Stowell felt himself on the edge of terrible revelations. But 
 he controlled himself. If Bessie had concealed part of the truth 
 what right had he to reveal it ? After a moment of silent terror he 
 asked Gell what he meant to do in the morning. 
 
 " Advise her to amend her plea and cast herself on the mercy 
 of the Court." 
 
 " Yes, that is the only proper course now," said Stowell, and 
 then GeU rose to go. 
 
 It was a wild night. The wind was higher than ever by this 
 time and the rain on the windows was rattling like hail. Stowell 
 asked Gell to sleep the night at Ballamoar, secretly hoping he 
 would refuse. He did. He had bespoken a bed at the Railway Inn 
 near to the station — ^he must go up by the first train in the morning. 
 
 Stowell saw him to the door, and held it open with his shoulder 
 against the wind, which swirled through the hall, making the flame 
 of the lamp on the landing to flame up in its funnel. Outside there 
 was the slashing of leaves and the crackling of boughs among the 
 elms around the lawn. 
 
 " Well, good-night," said GeU, and turning up the collar of 
 his coat, he went ofi^ in the darkness and the rain. 
 
 Stowell turned back into the house with a sense of degradation 
 he had never felt before. Oh, what a miserable coward a hidden 
 sin made of a man! Sooner or later it would be revealed and 
 then .... what then? 
 
 Suddenly he was startled by a new thought. Bessie's confes- 
 sion would give the trial an entirely diJFerent turn. If she pleaded 
 guilty in the morning there would be nothing for the Jury to do. 
 Either they would have to be dismissed or instructed to bring in a 
 formal verdict. The verdict against the prisoner would depend 
 upon the Judges. That is to say, Bessie's fate would depend upon 
 him — upon him alone ! 
 
 The first shock of this thought was terrible, but after a while 
 he told himself that it came to the same thing in the end. The 
 real responsibility was with the law. A judge was only the law's 
 spokesman. For a given crime a given punishment. A judge did 
 not make the sentence on a prisoner — he had only to pronounce it. 
 
 Strengthening himself so, he went to bed. For a long time he 
 lay awake, listening to the many sounds of the storm. In the 
 
286 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 middle of the night he was startled out of his troubled sleep by a 
 loud crash in the distance. 
 
 The morning broke fair, with a clear sky and the sea lying 
 under the sunshine like a sleeping child. But as he drove ofT, 
 after a scanty breakfast, he foimd the carriage-drive strewn with 
 young leaves, the torn bough of an old elm stretching across his 
 path, and a number of dead rooks lying about the lawn. 
 
 Outside the big gates he met Robbie Creer, who was riding 
 barebacked on a farm horse. The farmer had been over to the 
 Nappin and seen what he had expected. The headland was down; 
 there was a Gob (a mouth) where the Point had been, and the sea 
 was flowing between two cliffs that had been torn asunder. 
 
 Driving hard, Stowell arrived early at Castletown and foimd a 
 crowd at the Castle gate, waiting for the trial as for a show. He 
 was passing through the Deemster's private entrance when he 
 had a vision of a scene which the spectators could not be counting 
 upon. What if the prisoner, while making her confession, accused 
 her Judge? 
 
 Joshua Scarff, in his coloured spectacles, was waiting at the 
 door to the Deemster's room. 
 
 " I'm afraid your Honour is not well this morning," said 
 Joshua. 
 
 " A Utble headache, that's all," said Stowell. 
 
 But he had stiunbled on the threshold (a bad omen) and was 
 wondering what would happen before he came out again. 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTY 
 
 THE VERDICT 
 
 When the Court resumed Gell rose, with a haggard face, to 
 make an announcement. 
 
 In accordance with the suggestion of his Excellency, the 
 accused had been seen during the adjournment (though not by 
 him), with the result that she had confessed to having given birth 
 to a child and being the cause of its death. 
 
 " In these circumstances," he said, speaking in a husky voice, 
 " I have taken the only course open to me — ^that of advising her 
 to revise her plea, and with the permission of the Court she will^ 
 now do so." 
 
 There was a moment of agitation in which the Court was 
 understood to assent, and then Bessie was called upon to plead 
 again. But hardly had she risen at the call of the Deemster when 
 she broke down utterly and sob followed sob at every question 
 
THE VERDICT 287 
 
 that was put to her. At length she bowed her head and that 
 was accepted as her plea of guilty. 
 
 Then Gell rose again and said, 
 
 " Although the prisoner pleads guilty to causing the death of 
 her child, she says she did not so wilfully. Therefore I propose 
 to put her back in the box to prove extenuating circumstances." 
 
 Once more the Court agreed, but when Bessie was removed 
 from the dock to the witness-box she broke down again and not 
 a word could be got out of her. 
 
 " It is only natural," said Gell, " that she should feel sJiame 
 at having to take back what she said yesterday." 
 
 The Deemster bowed, and speaking with an obvious effort he 
 appealed to the girl to answer the questions of her advocate. But 
 still Bessie sobbed and made no answer. 
 
 " The Court has nothing left to it but to go on to j udgment," 
 said the Attorney-General. 
 
 At that moment, when the trial seemed to be brought to a stand- 
 still, Fenella (sitting near to the witness-box) was seen to lean 
 over and whisper to GeU, who rose and asked to be allowed to 
 make a suggestion — ^that inasmuch as the accused was unable to 
 answer for herself, somebody else, who knew what she wished to 
 say, should be empowered to answer for her. 
 
 The Deemster, seeing what was coming, seemed to catch his 
 breath, but after a moment he agreed'. The course proposed, 
 although unusual, was not contrary to the interests of justice or 
 altogether without precedent — a deaf and dumb witness always 
 giving evidence by a speaking proxy. Therefore if the Attorney- 
 General did not object .... 
 
 " Not at all," said the Attorney. 
 
 " In that case," said Gell, " I will ask the lady who received 
 the prisoner's confession to speak on her behalf — Miss Stanley." 
 
 It was said afterwards, when the events of that day had a 
 fierce light cast back upon them, that when Fenella stepped up 
 to the witness-box, and stood side by side with the prisoner, ready 
 to take her oath, the Deemster seemed scarcely able to recite the 
 familiar words to her. 
 
 " Please tell the Court, as nearly as possible in her own 
 words, what the prisoner told you," said Gell. 
 
 There was a deep and concentrated silence. Never before had 
 anybody witnessed so strange a scene. Speaking calmly and 
 firmly, Fenella told Bessie's story as Bessie herself had told it — 
 her journey from the south of the island, the birth and death of 
 her child, and the burying of it under the Clagh-ny-Dooiney. 
 
 When she had finished, and Bessie, who was stifling her sobs. 
 
288 TEB MASTER OF MAN 
 
 had bowed her head in reply to a question from Gell that she 
 assented to what had been said on her behalf), the Attorney- 
 General rose to cross-examine. 
 
 " Does the prisoner deny," he said, " that when she returned 
 home she told her mother of her condition? " 
 
 " Yes, her mother knew nothing about it." 
 
 " Does she deny that by keeping her condition secret from the 
 person most proper to know of it, she deliberately intended to put 
 her child away by violence ? " 
 
 " No, she does not deny that, but says that when her baby came 
 the instinct of motherhood came too, and from that moment onward 
 the idea of taking its life was far from her heart." 
 
 " Does the prisoner wish the Court to believe that — in spite of 
 her subsequent conduct in concealing the "birth and death of her 
 child and in secretly burying it? " 
 
 " Yes, she does, and if a court of men cannot believe it, a 
 court of women would, because . . . . " 
 
 But the Attorney-General, with a look of triumph, sat down 
 quickly, and Fenella, flushing up to her flaming eyes, stopped 
 suddenly. 
 
 There was another moment of deep silence in Court, and then 
 Gell, who had to struggle with his emotion, rose to re-examine. 
 
 " Does the prisoner say that when she killed her child she did 
 so vmconsciously and under the influence of fear ? " 
 
 " Yes, under the influence of fear — fear of her step-father who 
 had behaved like a brute to her." 
 
 " Does she think that, however lamentable her act, she was 
 moved to it by pardonable motives ? " 
 
 " Not pardonable motives merely," said Fenella, flaming up 
 again, " but nobly unselfish ones." 
 
 " Nobly unselfish motives ! " said the Attorney-General, rising 
 again. " Will the witness please tell the Court what she means 
 by nobly unselfish motives in a case like this ? " 
 
 " I mean," said Fenella, hesitating for a moment, looking up at 
 the Deemster and then (before she could be stopped) speaking 
 with passion and rapidly, " I mean that this girl was betrayed at 
 the time of her sorest need by one who should have protected her, 
 not taken advantage of her. I mean that, falling in love after- 
 wards with another man — a good man who was willing to make 
 her his wife — she committed the crime solely and only in an efi^ort 
 to cover up her fault and to save her honour in the eyes of the man 
 who loved her. I mean, too, that the real guilt lies not so much 
 with this poor creature who sits here in her shame, as with the man 
 who used her, caring nothing for her, and then left her to bear the 
 
TEE VERDICT 289 
 
 consequences of their sin alone. Shame on him! Shame on him! 
 May no good man own him for a friend! May no good woman 
 take him for a husband ! May he live to .... " 
 
 The irregular outburst was interrupted by a cry from the advo- 
 cates' benches. Grell had risen with wild eyes. He seemed to be 
 trying to speak. His mouth opened but he said nothing, and after 
 looking first at Fenella and then at the Deemster he sank back 
 to his seat. And then Fenella, as if realising what she had 
 done, sat also. 
 
 There were some moments of uneasy silence, and then the 
 Attorney-General rose for the last time. 
 
 " It is impossible," he said, " not to be moved by what we have 
 just heard, however improper on legal grounds it may have been. 
 But the Court will not allow themselves to be carried away by 
 their feelings. It is the natural consequence of great crimes that 
 they should bring great sufi'ering. The prisoner has confessed 
 to a great crime. She has failed to establish proof of extenuating 
 circumstances. Therefore, for the protection of human life, as 
 well as the good name of this island, I ask for the utmost penalty 
 of the law." 
 
 After that there was a long pause, broken only by some whis- 
 pering on the bench. It was observed that the Deemster took no 
 part in it, except to bend his head when the Governor and the 
 Clerk of the Rolls leaned across and spoke to him. At length, with 
 a manifest effort, and in a low voice (so low that the people in 
 Court had to lean forward to hear him) he began to address 
 the Jury. 
 
 II 
 
 " When a prisoner pleads Guilty," he said, " it is usual for the 
 Court to proceed at once to the sentence. But in the present 
 unhappy case it has been thought right that the Judge, in directing 
 the Jury to find a formal verdict, should indicate the grounds on 
 which the Court has based its judgment. 
 
 " The prisoner has pleaded guilty to taking the life of her 
 new-born child. She has confessed that down to the hour of its 
 birth she had the deliberate intention of making away with it, and 
 the Court is unhappily compelled to find in her conduct only too 
 many evidences of that design. 
 
 " But she has also said that after her child's birth, imder the 
 divine love and compassion of awakened motherhood, she repented 
 of her intention of killing it, and that it came to its death by 
 accident — the accident of semi-consciousness and the consequences 
 of her fear. The Court would gladly accept this explanation if 
 19 
 
290 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 it could be corroborated by the evidence. Unfortunately it can- 
 not. On the contrary the prisoner's subsequent behaviour points 
 to an entirely different conclusion. Therefore the Court has noth- 
 ing before it but the prisoner's confession that she intended to 
 take the life of her child, and the fact that she did indeed take it." 
 
 The Deemster paused (Gell had risen and was seen crushing 
 his way out of Court) ; then he continued, 
 
 " How her child came by its death is between God and her 
 conscience. It is not for me, or perhaps for any man, to read the 
 secret of a woman's heart in the dark hour of the birth of her 
 misbegotten child. Into the cloud of that mystery only the eye 
 of Heaven can follow her. But I should fail in my duty as a 
 Judge if I did not try to show that the Court is fully conscious 
 of the physical weaknesses and spiritual temptations which lie in 
 the way of a woman who is in the position of the accused." 
 
 Then followed, during some breathless moments, such speak- 
 ing as nobody present had ever heard before except from Stowell 
 himself, and only from him on iihe day when he snatched from the 
 gallows the rag of a woman who had killed her husband. 
 
 It was a contrast of the conditions attending the birth of a 
 child bom in wedlock, and of a child born illegitimate. They all 
 knew the first. The beloved young wife watching with a thrilling 
 heart for the signs of that coming event which was to complete her 
 joy; the happy months in which she is shielded from all harm; 
 the tender solicitude of her husband; her own sweet and secret 
 preparations for the little stranger who is to come; the guesses as 
 to its sex; the discussions as to its name — ^until at length, in the 
 fulness of its appointed timey the child bom in wedlock comes, like 
 an angel floating out of the sunrise, into a world that is waiting 
 for it to take it into its arms. 
 
 But the child born out of wedlock — ^what of that? The poor 
 mother, betrayed perhaps, abandoned perhaps, bereft of the love 
 she counted upon, living for months in fear of every accusing eye, 
 in dread of the being under her heart who is coming to shame 
 her, to drive her from her home, to make her an outcast and a 
 byword among women — until at last she creeps away to hide 
 herself in some secret place, where, alone, in the darkness of night, 
 distraught, amid the groans as of a thunderstorm, she faces death 
 to bring her fatherless babe into a world that wants it not. 
 
 " What wonder if sometimes," said the Deemster, " in the pain 
 of her body and the disorder of her soul, a woman (all the more if 
 she has hitherto borne a good character) should be tempted to 
 escape from her threatening disgrace by killing the child who is 
 the innocent cause of it? " 
 
THE VERDICT 291 
 
 But rightly or wrongly, the law could take no account of such 
 temptations. In the great eye of Justice the issues of life and 
 death were in God's hands only. Life was sacred, and not more 
 sacred was the life that came in the palace, with statesmen waiting 
 in the antechamber, the life of the heir to a throne, than the life 
 that came in the hovel and under the thatch, the life of the 
 bastard who was to run barefoot on the roads. 
 
 " It may be thought to be a hard law which takes no account 
 of temptations to which women are exposed when nature demands 
 that penalty from them which it never demands from men. But 
 we who sit here have nothing to do with that. Judges are sworn 
 to administer the law as they find it, whatever their own feelings 
 may be. Therefore the Court has now no choice but to direct the 
 Jury to find a verdict of guilty against the prisoner." 
 
 There was a deep drawing of breath in Court, and everybody 
 thought the Deemster had finished, but after another short 
 pause, in a tremulous voice which vibrated through all hearts, 
 he continued, 
 
 " But the Jury has a right which the Judges cannot exercise — 
 they can go beyond the law. And if, having heard the evidence in 
 this case, and having God and a good conscience before them, the 
 Jury, in finding their formal verdict, can come to a conclusion 
 favourable to the prisoner's story, they may recommend her to the 
 mercy of the Crown, and thereby lead, perhaps, to the lessening 
 of her punishment, and even to the wiping of it out altogether. If 
 not, the law must take its course, at the discretion of the Governor 
 as the representative of the King." 
 
 When the Deemster's tremulous voice had ceased the jurymen 
 put their heads together for a moment. Then one of them rose 
 to ask if they might retire to their own room to consider the point 
 left to them by His Honour. 
 
 " The Court agrees," said the Governor, and the jurymen 
 trooped out. 
 
 The Judges and the advocates went out also, and the prisoner 
 (who had been clinging to Fenella's hand) was removed. Only 
 die spectators remained in their places. They were afraid to lose 
 them for the concluding scene. , 
 
 III 
 
 In a small unventilated room overlooking the Keep the Jury 
 considered their share of the verdict. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said one (he was an auctioneer and a Town 
 
292 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Commissioner), " you heard what the Deemster said. We can't 
 let her off but we can recommend her to mercy." 
 
 " Why should we ? " said another, a tall landowner with a 
 bad reputation about women. " She killed her child. Leit her 
 swing, I say." 
 
 " But she said she didn't intend to and that she was out of 
 herself and frightened by her step-father," said a., third — a fat 
 butcher who was sitting astride on a chair and making it creak 
 under him. 
 
 " Ohut! That was only an after-thought," said a fourth — a 
 little bald-headed English grocer. 
 
 " Still and for all we know what Dan Baldromma is," said the 
 butcher, " an infidel who believes neither in God nor the devil." 
 
 " He's devil enough himself," said the grocer. " His father 
 was the 'angman." 
 
 " That was his uncle," said the butcher. 
 
 " No, but his father. They called him Dan the Black, and 
 after the 'anging of Patrick Kelly of Kentraugh . . . . " 
 
 " Question ! Question ! " cried the Town Commissioner. 
 " Let's keep to the point, gentlemen." 
 
 " Let's get finished and away," said the grocer. " I've 'ad 
 an addition to my family, I may tell you. A son at last after four 
 daughters. My wife's getting up to-day and we're to 'ave a turkey 
 for dinner. Let the woman off, I say." 
 
 " But we can't man. Didn't you hear what the Deemster 
 said? " 
 
 " Then let the 'uzzy 'ang." 
 
 " Are we to recommend the girl to mercy — that's the question," 
 said the Town Commissioner. 
 
 " Why shouldn't we? " said the butcher. " Hundreds and 
 tons of girls have done as bad before now, and nobody a penny the 
 wiser. Why make flesh of one and fowl of another ? " 
 
 " If we show mercy to women of this sort we'll only encourage 
 them in their bad conduct," said the landowner. 
 
 This led to a random discussion on the question of Women or 
 Men, which were the worst? The landlord was loud in denuncia- 
 tion of women, the butcher was more indulgent. 
 
 " Look here," said the butcher, " this isn't a game a woman 
 can go into a corner and play all by herself, you know. For 
 every bad woman there's a bad man knocking about somewhere," 
 
 " A man isn't always filling his house with by-children any- 
 way," said the landowner. 
 
 " No," said the butcher, " but he is sometimes filling other 
 people's though." 
 
THE YERDICT 293 
 
 " That's personal, and I won't stand it," cried the landowner, 
 and then there were loud shouts with much smiting of the table. 
 In the midst of the tumult a quiet voice was heard to say, 
 " Hadn't we better lay this matter before the Lord, brothers? " 
 It was a northside farmer and local preacher, who (not always 
 to his financial advantage) had made it the rule of his life, 
 whether in the reaping of bis corn or the sowing of his turnips, to 
 wait for Divine guidance. In another moment he was on his knees, 
 and one by one his fellow-jurymen, including the long landowner, 
 had slithered down after him. 
 
 When they rose they were apparently of one opinion — that 
 inasmuch as nobody except God knew why Bessie had killed her 
 child (being alone and under the cloud of night) the only thing 
 to do was to leave her to the Lord. 
 
 Meantime Gell, with restless and irregular footsteps, was strid- 
 ing about in the court-yard. Fenella's outburst had fallen on him 
 like a flash of lightning in the darkness. Everything had sud- 
 denly become clear — all the vague fears that had haunted him so 
 long, the suspicions he had thrust behind his back, the facts he had 
 been unable to understand. What a blind fool he had been ! 
 
 Stowell ! His life-long friend, on whose word he would have 
 staked his soul ! There must have been a conspiracy to deceive 
 him. Both Stowell and Bessie had been in it — Stowell to get rid 
 of the girl he no longer wanted, and Bessie to cover up her dis- 
 grace by marrying him. What a plot ! The woman he had loved 
 and the man he had worshipped! He saw himself hoodwinked 
 by both of them, lied to, perhaps laughed at. His life, his faith, 
 his love had crashed down in a moment. It was too cruel, 
 too damnable! 
 
 The air was chill, though the sun was shining, but Gell took off 
 his wig and carried it in his hand, for his head seemed to be afire. 
 
 After a time the hatred he had felt for Bessie became centred, 
 with a hundredfold intensity, upon Stowell. Even if Bessie had 
 begun with an intention of betraying him, she must have repented 
 of it afterwards, and committed her crime, poor girl, because (as 
 Fenella had said) she had come to love him. But Stowell had 
 carried on his deception to the last moment. He was carrying it 
 on now, when he was sitting in judgment on his own victim. He 
 meant to sentence her to death, too. Yes, under all his fine phrases 
 it was easy to see that he meant to sentence her. But if he did so 
 Gell would murder him. 
 
 " Yes, hj God, I'll murder him," he thought. 
 
294 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 In the darkness of her cell, with no light on her tortured face 
 except that of the candle behind the grill, Bessie, breaking into 
 another fit of hysteria, was reproaching Fenella with deceiv- 
 ing her. 
 
 " You told me that if I confessed the Deemster would let me 
 off. But he is going to condemn me. Why couldn't you let me 
 be What for did you come here at all ? I didn't ask you, did I ? " 
 
 " Be calm," said Fenella, " and I will explain everything." 
 
 After awhile Bessie regained her composure and then she 
 asked for forgiveness. 
 
 " I beg your pardon. Sometimes I don't know what I am 
 saying. It has been like that all through the time of my trouble. 
 It was very wrong to forget how you spoke up for me in Court. 
 You'll forgive me, won't you.? " 
 
 And then Fenella, though sorely in need of comfort herself, 
 comforted the girl and reassured her. The Court might be com- 
 pelled to sentence her, as it had sentenced other girls for similar 
 crimes, but the sentence would not be carried out. It never was 
 in these days. 
 
 " Besides/' she said, " the jury will recommend you to mercy, 
 and then the Judges will exercise their discretionary power to 
 reduce your punishment." 
 
 Bessie's eyes began to shine. ■ 
 
 " You must really forgive me .... And Alick — do you 
 think Alick will forgive me too.'' " 
 
 " Yes, when he sees that what you did was done out of your 
 love for him." 
 
 " How good you are ! . . . . And shall we be able to leave 
 the Isle of Man and go away somewhere.'' " 
 
 " Perhaps .... some day." 
 
 " Oh, how good you are ! I don't know what I've done for you 
 to be so good to me. I didn't think anybody except a girl's 
 mother could be so good to her." 
 
 She was like a child again. Her face, though still wet, was 
 beaming. In the selfishness of her suffering it had not occurred 
 to her before that her comforter had been suffering also, but now, 
 in some vague way, she became aware of it. 
 
 " If they ask me who he was," she said, in a whisper (meaning 
 who had been her fellow-sinner), " I'll never tell them — never! " 
 
 Fenella's humiliation was abject. " When we go back to 
 Court," she said, " you must be brave, whatever happens." 
 
 " Will you let me hold your hand? " said Bessie. 
 
 And Fenella, scarcely able to speak, answered, 
 
 " Yes." 
 
TBE VERDICT 295 
 
 In the Deemster's room there was a painful silence. The 
 Clerk of the Rolls was under the deeply-recessed window, turning 
 over the crinkling folios of the Depositions in the case to be taken 
 next. The Governor, stretched out in the leathern bound armchair 
 before the empty fireplace, was smoking hard and trying to justify 
 himself to his own conscience. Stowell was sitting at the end of 
 the long table, with his head in his hands, gazing down at the red 
 blotting-pad in front of him. 
 
 No one spoke. Occasionally there came from without the 
 mournful cry of the gulls flying over the harbour, and, at one 
 moment, the ululation of a crew of Irish sailors who were weighing 
 anchor on a schooner in the bay. 
 
 The profound silence around only made louder the thunder in 
 Stowell's soul. He knew he was at the crisis of his life. On what 
 he did now the future of his life depended. 
 
 The address to the Jury had been a fearful ordeal, but the sen- 
 tence would be terrible. To sentence Bessie Collister, having been 
 the first cause of her crime — could he do it? It might only be a 
 formal sentence (the Crown being certain to commute the punish- 
 ment), but the awful words prescribed by the Statute — ^would they 
 not choke in his very throat? 
 
 And then Fenella! Her voice was ringing in his ears stiU; 
 
 " Shame on him ! Let no good man own him for a friend ! 
 Let no good woman take him for a husband ! " 
 
 " And what will be the end ? " he asked himself. 
 
 He heard the door open behind him. A low hum of voices 
 came down the staircase from the Court-house. There was a 
 footstep on the carpeted floor. Somebody by his side was speak- 
 ing. It was Joshua ScarfF. 
 
 " The Jury are ready to return to Court, your Honour." 
 
 IV 
 
 When Stowell resumed his seat on the bench, and the buzz of 
 conversation had subsided, he was conscious of the presence of 
 only three persons besides himself — Bessie in the dock with 
 FeneUa by her side, and Alick Gell, with distorted face and wig a 
 little awry, in the bench in front of them. 
 
 The Jurymen filed back. The Clerk of the Rolls read out their 
 names and then asked for their formal verdict. 
 
 " You find the prisoner Guilty, according to the instructions 
 of the Court?" 
 
 " Aw, yes, guilty enough, poor soul," said the foreman (it was 
 the northside farmer), " but lave her to the Lord, we say." 
 
296 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 There was a titter at this quaint findings but it was quickly 
 suppressed. Then the Clerk of the Rolls saidj 
 
 " I assume that means that you recommend her to mercy? " 
 
 " Aw, yes, mercy enough too," said the foreman, " for when 
 the sacrets of all hearts are revealed it's mercy we'll all 
 be wanting." 
 
 After that Stowell was conscious of a still deeper hush in 
 Court. He saw Bessie, in the full glare of her shame, standing in 
 the dock, holding the rail with one hand and clinging to Fenella 
 with the other. 
 
 He heard himself asking her if she had anything to say why 
 judgment should not be pronounced upon her. She made no 
 answer, but there was a strange expression of frightened hope 
 in her face. He understood— she was expecting that he would 
 save her even at the last moment. 
 
 At that sight there came to him one of those frightful impulses 
 which tempt people on dizzy heights, from sheer fear of danger, 
 to fling themselves into the abyss below. 
 
 " Prisoner at the bar," he said, " it has been said on your be- 
 half that you were first led to do what you did by the act of one 
 who remains unpunished while you have to bear the full weight 
 of your fall. If you think it will lessen the burden of your crime 
 to plead this as an extenuating circumstance speak — it is not too 
 late to do so." 
 
 Bessie made no reply, and Stowell, who felt Fenella's eyes 
 fixed on him, continued, 
 
 " Don't be afraid. If you think it will lighten your guilt in 
 the eyes of the Court to mention that man's name, mention it." 
 
 Bessie swayed a little, as if dizzy, looked round at Fenella, and 
 then turned back to the bench and shook her head. 
 
 The hush in Court was broken by a rustle of astonishment. 
 Had the Deemster lost himself? Stowell was conscious of a naove- 
 ment by his side and of the Governor saying, in an angry whisper, 
 
 " Go on, for God's sake ! " 
 
 At length, in a voice so low as to be only just heard even in 
 the breathless silence, he said, 
 
 " Elizabeth Corteen, you have pleaded guilty to the charge of 
 taking the life of your innocent child, the little helpless babe who 
 had no other natural protector than the mother who bore it on 
 her bosom. By this act you have brought yourself under the con- 
 demnation of the law, and it is for the law to punish you. But 
 out of regard to your sufferings and the uncertainty as to your 
 motives, the Jury have recommended you to mercy, and it will be 
 my duty to see that their prayer is sent, through His Excellency 
 
THE VERDICT 297 
 
 the Governor, to the high and proper authority, in the hope that 
 the measure of pardon which, in all but exceptional cases, is 
 granted to persons in your position, may be extended to you also." 
 
 The tears were rolling down Bessie's cheeks, but Stowell saw 
 that she was still looking up at him with the same expression. 
 
 " Meantime," he continued, " and however that may be, the 
 Court has no choice but to condemn you to the punishment pre- 
 scribed by law. We who sit here must act according to our oath 
 and our duty. Justice " (he was pointing with a trembling hand 
 to the motto under his father's picture) " is the most sacred thing 
 on earth, and even .... even if your fellow-sinner himself sat 
 on this bench, his first duty would be to Justice, for Justice is 
 above all." 
 
 Then lowering his head and speaking rapidly, in a mufiSed' and 
 indistinguishable whisper, Stowell pronounced the sentence of 
 death. None of it seemed to be clearly heard until he reached 
 the last words (" and may God have mercy on your soul "), and 
 then there came a loud scream from the dock. 
 
 Bessie, who had been leaning forward and listening intently 
 (the look of hope and expectation on her face darkening to dismay 
 and terror), had dropped back, and would have fallen but for 
 Fenella, who had leapt up and caught her. 
 
 " Remove the prisoner," said the Governor sharply, and at the 
 next moment the constables were carrying the girl out of Court 
 screaming and sobbing. 
 
 But before she had gone there was a movement in the benches 
 of the advocates. Alick Gell had risen again, with wild eyes, and 
 he was shouting after her: 
 
 " Never mind, Bessie ! I would rather be you than your 
 Judge." 
 
 There was consternation in Court. Everybody was on his feet 
 to look after the prisoner, and at Gell, who was being hustled out 
 after her. But hardly had the door closed behind them, when 
 there was another cry in Court: 
 
 "The Deemster!" 
 
 Stowell had risen also. He had stood looking after the pris- 
 oner until her last cry had died away in the corridor. Then he 
 had turned about, as if intending to leave the bench, taken a step 
 forward, stumbled, and dropped to one knee. 
 
 The Governor rose and reached forward to help him. But he 
 recovered himself immediately. His face was very pale, but he 
 smiled, a pitiful smile, as if saying, " A little dizziness, nothing 
 more," and waved off assistance. 
 
288 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Bracing himself up, he stood aside for the Governor to go 
 before him, and then walked out of Court with a firm step. The 
 ring of his tread was plainly heard as he passed through the 
 g^een baize door that led to the Deemster's room. 
 
 The spectators looked into each other's faces as if bewildered 
 by what they had seen and heard. Although the business of the 
 day was not yet over most of them trooped out, feeling that they 
 had been witnessing a drama whereof only a part had been revealed 
 to them — as by dark shadows on a white blind. 
 
 EXD OF FOURTH BOOK 
 
FIFTH BOOK 
 THE REPARATION 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 
 
 " VICTOR ! VICTOR ! MY VICTOR ! " 
 
 " Good heavens, how was I to know that things would turn 
 out so badly? " 
 
 It was the Governor, alone with Stowell in the Deemster's 
 room, at the end of the second day of the Court of General 
 Gaol Delivery. 
 
 " As for you, what have you to reproach yourself with ? So far 
 as this case is concerned you have done nothing that is wrong or 
 irregular. The girl was guilty. You gave her a fair trial. The 
 law required that she should be condemned. You had to condemn 
 her. Then why take things so tragically.'' " 
 
 "But Fenella?" 
 
 " She will get over it. Of course she will. What sensible 
 woman is going to throw away the happiness of a life-time because 
 of something that happened before she came on to the scene? " 
 
 " You heard what she said. Sir? " 
 
 " I did, and thought it nonsense. I heard what you said also, 
 and thought it madness. What a providential escape! Thank 
 God it is all over ! The miserable case is at an end. Let us think 
 no more about it." 
 
 An Inspector of Police cams into the room to say that Miss 
 Stanley had left the Castle at the close of the murder trial and 
 asked him to tell her father that she was going home by train. 
 The Governor, with knitted eyebrows and a frown, dismissed the 
 Inspector, and then said to Stowell, as he turned to go,. 
 
 " All the same I am bound to say the whole thing has been 
 unfortunate — damnably unfortunate ! " 
 
 Stowell continued to sit for some minutes in his robes after the 
 Governor had left him. Joshua Scarff came with a glass 
 of brandy. 
 
 " Take this, your Honour. It vnW strengthen your nerves for 
 your drive home. I could see you were not well when you arrived 
 this morning," 
 
 299 
 
300 THB MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Stowell had drunk the brandy and was setting down the tumbler 
 when the Inspector came back to say that after the murder trial 
 he had liberated Dan Baldromma, but had just been compelled 
 to arrest somebody else. 
 
 "Who else?" 
 
 " Mr. Gell. The gentleman seems to have gone clean off it. 
 Sir. It's the loss of his case, I suppose." 
 
 Ever since the Court had risen he had been demanding to be 
 allowed to see the Deemster and threatening what he would do to 
 him. So to prevent the Advocate from doing a mischief the police 
 had put him in the cells. 
 
 " Set him at liberty at once," said Stowell. 
 
 " Before your Honour leaves the Castle? " 
 
 " Instantly." 
 
 The Inspector being gone (with the intention of disobeying the 
 Deemster's command in order to ensure his safety), Joshua 
 Scarff proceeded to read Cell's conduct by quite a different light. 
 It was easy to see now that Mr. Gell had been the girl's fellow- 
 sinner and therefore the cause of her crime. 
 
 " Pity ! Great pity ! " said Joshua, as he helped Stowell to 
 unrobe. " But such connections always begin to end badly." 
 
 There were still a few of the spectators at the gate, waiting to 
 see the Deemster away, and when he came out, with his white face, 
 another wave of sympathy went out to him. 
 
 " They've been putting the young colt into the shafts too 
 soon — that's what it is, I tell thee." 
 
 Driving over the harbour bridge in his automobile Stowell 
 began to feel better. The fresh air from the sea, after the close 
 atmosphere of the Court-house, broug'ht the blood back to his 
 brain, and he thought he saw things more clearly. 
 
 The Governor had been right. He could not have acted other- 
 wise without being false to his oath as a Judge. And if the 
 miserable fact remained that he should never have been the Judge 
 in this case at all, it was Fenella herself, above everybody else, who 
 had thrust him into the furnace of that position. Surely she 
 would remember this, and it would plead in her heart for him ? 
 
 Half-a-mile beyond the town he passed the Governor's big blue 
 landau, and realised that by some half -conscious impulse he was 
 taking the road to Government House instead of the direct way 
 home. So much the better ! He must see Fenella at the first 
 possible moment, and find out what his fate was to be. 
 
 His spirits rose as he bounded along. Granted he had done 
 wrong in the first instance, terribly and cruelly wrong, hadn't he 
 
VICTOR! VICTOR I UY VICTOR 301 
 
 had many excuses? If Bessie Collister had told her everything, 
 surely Fenella would see this, too, and seeing it, would understand ? 
 
 But the great fact of all was that (except for the first catas- 
 trophe) his love of Fenella had been the root cause of all that had 
 happened. If he had not loved Fenella with that deep, uncon- 
 querable, unquenchable love which had swept everything else 
 away (all qualms and perhaps all conscience), nothing worse could 
 have occurred. He would have married that poor girl now lying 
 in prison. Yes, whatever the consequences to himself, he would 
 have married her before Gell came back into her life, and further 
 complications ensued. But after Fenella returned to the island no 
 other woman had been possible to him. Surely she would see this 
 also? And, if she did, nothing else would matter to either of 
 them — nothing in this world. 
 
 Presently, driving at high speed, he realised that the half- 
 conscious impulse which had carried him on to the road to Govern- 
 ment House was sweeping him on to the rocky shelf on the coast 
 along which he had driven with Fenella on the day he took his oath. 
 
 How fortunate! What was that she had said, then, as they 
 sang together in the fulness of their j oy over the hum of the engine 
 and the boom of the sea? — that love, what she called love, never 
 died and never changed, and if she loved anybody, and anything 
 happened to him, she would fight the world for him, even though 
 he were in the wrong ! 
 
 Even though he were in the wrong! 
 
 She would do it now ! He was sure she would ! Yes, the first 
 shock of the wretched revelation being over, she would see how he 
 had sufi"ered, and how he had striven to do the right, and then — 
 then everything would be weU. 
 
 Thus, as he flew over the roads, he built himself up in the hope 
 of Fenella's forgiveness. But as he approached Government 
 House his heart failed him again. Something whispered that the 
 excuses he had been making for himself were no better than a 
 pretence — ^that Fenella would see him now for the first time as 
 the man he really was, not the man she had imagined him to be. 
 
 And then — what would happen then? 
 
 II 
 
 As soon as the trial was over and Bessie, weeping bitterly, was 
 taken back to the cells, Fenella had left Castle Rushen. She was 
 ashamed. Remembering her wild outburst under the Attorney- 
 General's examination, she was reproaching herself bitterly. 
 
302 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Whatever Victor Stowell had done, what right had she to denounce 
 him? She of all others! In open Court too! 
 
 And then Gell ! Although nobody else had understood her, he 
 had done so. He might have been living in a fool's paradise, but 
 was it for her he^ to reveal the awful truth to him? In public, too, 
 and at that harrowing moment? 
 
 To escape from the pain of self-reproach she kept on telling 
 herself, as she went back in the train, that Stowell had deceived 
 her. Oh, if he had only confessed, at any rate to her, she thought 
 she could have forgiven him in spite of all. But no, he had 
 hidden everything down to the last moment, and left her to find 
 him out. 
 
 On reaching home she excused herself to old Miss Green and 
 hurried up to her bedroom. Her head ached and her heart was 
 sore — the young woman she had been working for had been found 
 guilty and condemned. She told her maid she was tired, and if 
 anybody asked for her she was not to be disturbed. 
 
 Two hours passed. Her heart was going through a wild riot 
 of mingled anger and love. It was like madness. She loved 
 Stowell; she hated him; she worshipped him; she despised him. 
 At one moment she recalled with a bitter laugh the mockery of his 
 questioning of Bessie Collister in the dock ; at the next she remem- 
 bered with scorching tears the pathos of his sentencing her. 
 
 Obscure motives were operating in her soul to intensify her 
 pain. Jealous? She, jealous of that illiterate country girl who 
 had murdered her illegitimate child — ^what nonsense! No, her 
 idol was broken. She had set it so high and now it was in the dust. 
 
 She expected Stowell to come to her as soon as his Court was 
 over. Again and again she raised her head from her wet pillow 
 to listen for the sound of his car on the drive. Yet when a knock 
 came at her door and her maid announced the arrival of the 
 Deemster (never dreaming that the injunction against callers 
 had been intended to apply to him) her first impulse was to send 
 him away. 
 
 " Say I'm unwell and can't see him," she cried from her bed. 
 
 But at the next moment she was up and whispering at the door, 
 
 " Show Mr. Stowell into the library and tell him I shall be 
 down presently." 
 
 Her voice was hoarse ; her face was aflame ; her eyes were red 
 from persistent weeping. No water could sponge away those 
 marks of her emotion. Never mind ! He should see how he had 
 made her suffer. She would go downstairs and charge him, face 
 to face, with his deceit and hypocrisy, and then — ^then fling her- 
 self into his arms. 
 
VICTOR! VICTOR! MY VICTOR 303 
 
 But when she opened the library door and saw him standing on 
 the hearthrug, with head down and a look of utter abasement, her 
 courage failed her. She dare not look twice at his ravaged face, 
 so she sank on to the sofa and covered her eyes with her hands. 
 
 Several minutes passed in which neither of them spoke. There 
 was no sound except that of his laboured breathing and of the 
 ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. "If he does not speak 
 soon," she thought, " I shall break into tears and fly out of 
 the room." 
 
 But she did not move, and at last came his voice, humble and 
 broken, and thrilling through and through her : 
 
 " Fenella ! " 
 
 She did' not answer; she could not; and again, after another 
 moment of silence, he said, 
 
 " Fenella, I have come to ask you to forgive me." 
 
 She wanted to burst out crying, and to prevent herself from 
 doing so she broke into a flood of wrath. 
 
 " Forgive you ? " she said. " Ask that poor creature in Castle 
 Rushen to forgive you — that poor girl whom you have just con- 
 demned for a crime that is the consequence of your own sin." 
 
 He did not reply for a moment, and then came the same hum- 
 ble, unsteady voice, saying, 
 
 " No doubt you are quite right, quite justified, but if you knew 
 everything — that I could not help myself — ^that it was the 
 law . . . . " 
 
 " Oh, I know nothing about your laws," she cried, leaping up 
 and crossing the room, " but they are unjust and barbarous and 
 against reason and humanity if they allow a girl to be condemned 
 to death for a crime like that while the Judge who was the first 
 cause of it sits in judgment on his own victim." 
 
 " You are right there too," said Stowell, " but if you knew 
 how I tried to avoid sitting on the case, and only allowed myself 
 to do so at last in the hope of seeing justice done and thereby 
 making some sort of amends .... 
 
 " Amends ! " cried Fenella. " What amends can there be for 
 a wrong like that ? Oh, I hate people who think they can make 
 amends for one fault by committing another." 
 
 There was silence again for a moment and then Stowell said, 
 
 " You are right there also. There is a kind of wrongdoing 
 that cannot be atoned for. I see that now. But if you knew 
 how I have suffered for it and still suffer . . . . " 
 
 " Suffer ? Why shouldn't you suffer } Isn't that poor girl 
 suffering? Hasn't she suffered all along? And whatever you do 
 
804 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 for her now, won't she go on suflFering to the last daj and hour 
 of her life?" 
 
 He dropped his head still lower imder the lash of Fenella's 
 scorn. 
 
 " That is not all either," she said in a broken voice, sitting on 
 the sofa again and brushing her handkerchief over her eyes. " Per- 
 haps that girl is not the only one who is suffering. I wanted to 
 think so well of you, to be so proud of you. You were to be the 
 defender of women, fighting their battle for them when they were 
 wronged and helpless. And when you became a Judge .... 
 Oh, I cannot bear to think of it. You have disappointed and de- 
 ceived me. You are not the man I took you to be." 
 
 Outside the sun was setting. A dull ray from it was falling 
 on his haggard face and brushing her bronze-brown hair. 
 
 " I thought you loved me too. It was so sweet to think you 
 loved me — me only — ^never having loved anybody else. Every 
 woman has felt like that, hasn't she? I have anyway. Other 
 men might be faithless, but not you, not Victor Stowell. And yet, 
 for the sake of your poor fancy for this comitry girl . . . . " 
 
 "Fenella!" 
 
 " Oh, what a fool I've been," she cried, leaping up again and 
 dashing the tears from her eyes. " Forgive you? Never while 
 that girl lies in prison as the consequence of your sin." 
 
 Stowell could bear no more. Stepping forward, he laid hold 
 of Fenella by the shoulders, and approaching his face to her face 
 he said, 
 
 " Listen to me, Fenella. I have done wrong — I know that. I 
 am not here to excuse or defend myself, and if your heart does not 
 plead for me I have nothing to say. But I swear before God that 
 I have loved you with all my soul and strength, and if it hadn't 
 been for that . . . . " 
 
 " Loved me ! " cried Fenella, between a laugh and a sob. And 
 then in the wild delirium of the sheer woman, she said, 
 
 " What proof of your love have you given to me compared to 
 the proof you have given to that girl? Oh, when I think of it I 
 could almost find it in my heart to envy her. I do envy her. Yes, 
 degraded and shamed and condemned and in prison as she is, I 
 envy her, and could change places with her this very minute. I 
 would have given you anything in the world rather than this 
 should be — anything, my honour, myself . . . . " 
 
 "Fenella!" 
 
 " Let me go ! You are driving me mad. Leave me. I hate 
 you. I despise you. You have broken my heart. I thought you 
 were brave and true, but what are you but a common . . . . " 
 
VICTOR ! VIOTOR! MY VICTOR 306 
 
 I'Fenella!" 
 
 "Coward! Hypocrite! Let me go!" 
 
 But she had no need to wrench herself away from him. His 
 hands fell from her shoulders like lead, and at the next moment 
 she was gone from the room. 
 
 He stood for a while where she had left him with the echo of 
 her stinging words ringing in his ears. Bitter, unj ust and cruel as 
 they had been, he was struggling to excuse her. She did not 
 understand. Bessie had not told her all. Presently she would 
 come back and ask his pardon. 
 
 But she did not come, and after a while (it seemed like an 
 eternity), feeling crushed, degraded, trampled upon, dragged in 
 the dust and wounded in his tenderest aiFections, he left the room 
 and the house. 
 
 Outside, where his automobile was standing, he still lingered, 
 expecting to be called back. It was impossible that Fenella would 
 let him part from her like this. He knew where she was — in the 
 Governor's smoking-room which overlooked the drive. At the last 
 moment she would knock at the window and cry, " Stay ! " 
 
 Slowly he moved around his car, opening the bonnet, touching 
 the engine, starting it, pulling on his long driving gloves. But 
 still she gave no sign, and at length he prepared to step into his 
 seat. Was this to be the end — ^the end of everything? 
 
 Meantime, Fenella, alone in her father's room and recovering 
 from the storm of her anger, was beginning to be afraid. She 
 wanted to go back to Stowell and say, " I was mad. I didn't 
 know what I was saying. I love you so much." 
 
 But her pride would not permit her to do that, and she waited 
 for Stowell to do something. Why didn't he burst through the 
 door, throw his arms about her, and compel her to forgive him ? 
 
 She listened intently for a long time, but there came no sound 
 from the adjoining room. What was he doing? Presently she 
 heard him coming out of the library, walking with a firm step 
 down the corridor to the porch, opening the front door and 
 closing it behind him. 
 
 Was he leaving her? Like this? Then he would never come 
 back. She heard his footstep on the gravel and looking through 
 the window she saw him, with his white face, raising his soft hat 
 to wipe his perspiring forehead, and then climbing into the car. 
 Could it be possible that he was going away without another word? 
 
 In spite of her jealousy and rage, she felt an immense admira- 
 tion for the man who, loving her as she was sure he did, was yet 
 80 strong that he could leave her after she had insulted and 
 20 
 
306 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 humiliated him. She wanted to throw up the w'ndow and cry, 
 " Wait ! I am coming out to you." 
 
 But no, her pride would not permit her to do that either, and 
 at the next instant the car was moving away. 
 
 She watched it until it had disappeared behind the trees. Then 
 she turned to go back to her bedroom. At the foot of the stairs 
 she met Miss Green who, shocked at the sight of her disordered 
 face, said, 
 
 " My goodness, Fenella! What has happened.^ " 
 
 In the plaintive voice of a crying child, Fenella answered, 
 
 " He has gone. I have driven him away." 
 
 Then she stumbled upstairs, locked the door of her room on the 
 inside, threw herself face down on the bed, burst into a flood of 
 tempestuous tears, and cried aloud to Stowell, now that he could 
 no longer hear her — 
 
 "Victor! Victor! My Victor!" 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO 
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SEA 
 
 " Forgive you ? Never while that girl lies in prison as the con- 
 sequence of your sin." 
 
 The words beat on Stowell's brain with the paralysing effect of 
 a muffled drum. He was driving up the mountain road. Char-a- 
 bancs, full of English visitors (who were laughing and singing in 
 chorus), were coming down. The drivers shouted at him from 
 time to time. This irritated him until he realised that his motor- 
 car was oscillating from side to side of the road. 
 
 When he reached the top, where the road turns towards the 
 glen, all the heart was gone out of him. The great scene no longer 
 brought the old joyousness. With love lost and hope quenched 
 the soul of the world was dead, and the heavens were dark 
 above him. 
 
 At the bottom of the glen, where it dips into the Curragh, he 
 came upon a group of bare-headed women, with their arms under 
 their aprons, surrounding a little person with watery eyes, in a 
 poke bonnet and a satin mantle. Mrs. CoUister had returned from 
 Castletown, and her neighbours were taking her home. 
 
 " Never mind, woman ! It will be all set right at the judgment. 
 And then the man will be found out and punished, too ! " 
 
 At th coerner of the cross roads Dan Baldromma threw himself 
 in front of the car, to draw it up, and in his raucous voice he fell 
 on Stowell with a torrent of abuse. 
 
THE VOICE OF THE SEA 307 
 
 " You've been locking up a respectable man, Dempster, but you 
 can't lock up his tongue, and the island is going to know whaA 
 justice in the Isle of Man can be." 
 
 Stowell made no answer. Any poor creature could insult 
 him now. 
 
 Janet was waiting for him at BaUamoar, with a fire in the 
 library, and the tea-tray ready. But the sweet home atmosphere 
 only made him think of the happiness that had been so nearly 
 within his reach. 
 
 Seeing that something was amiss, Janet assumed her cheeriest 
 tone, brought out two patterns of damask, laid them over chairs, 
 and asked which Fenella would like best for her boudoir. 
 
 " I don't know. I can't say. But .... it doesn't matter 
 now." 
 
 Janet gathered up her patterns and went out of the room 
 without a word. 
 
 " Forgive you? Never while that girl lies in prison." The 
 stinging words followed him to his bedroom.' They broke up his 
 sleep. They rang like the screech of an owl ^through the dark- 
 ness of the night. 
 
 Next day, not trusting himself to drive his oar, he returned 
 to Castletown by train. There were only two first-class compart- 
 ments and both were full. He was about to step into a third-class 
 carriage when a voice cried, 
 
 " This way. Deemster. Always room enough for you." 
 
 There was to be a sitting of the Keys that day and the com- 
 partment was full of northside members. The talk was about 
 yesterday's trial, and Stowell realised that his management of the 
 case had created a favourable impression. Merciful to the pris- 
 oner? Yes, untU her guilt was established, but then just, even 
 at the expense of friendship. 
 
 This led to talk about Gell as the girl's feUow-sinner. 
 
 " Shocking ! But it's not the first time he has been mixed up 
 with a woman." 
 
 Stowell felt an intolerable shame at GeU's undeserved obloquy 
 and his own unmerited glory, but he could say nothing. 
 
 " It will kiU the old man," said one of the Keys. The train 
 had drawn up at a side station and his voice was loud in the 
 vacant air. 
 
 "Hush!" 
 
 The Speaker was in the next compartment. 
 
 When the train started again a little man with the face of a 
 f^ret began to make facetious references to " Fanny." Stowell's 
 hands were itching to take the ribald creature by the throat and 
 
308 THE MABTBB OF MAN 
 
 fling him out of the window, but something whispered, " Who are 
 you to be the champion of virtue ? " 
 
 At Court that day, and the day following, he found it hard 
 to concentrate. At one moment an advocate said, 
 
 " Perhaps your Honour is not well this morning ? " 
 
 " Oh no! I heard you. You were saying . . . . " 
 
 The rapidity of his mind enabled him to make up for his 
 lapses in attention, and when his time came to sum up he was 
 always ready. 
 
 He was indulgent to the accused. All the other prisoners were 
 acquitted — the fat woman for the reason that, bad as her character 
 might be, the characters of her drunken sailors were yet worse 
 (therefore no credit could be attached to their evidence), and the 
 boy who had embezzled on the ground that his superiors at the 
 bank had been guilty of almost criminal negligence, and the four 
 months he had been in prison already were sufficient to satisfy the 
 claims of justice. 
 
 The boy's mother', who was standing at the back, threw her 
 arms about him and kissed him when he stepped out of the dock, 
 and then, turning her streaming face up to the bench, she cried, 
 
 " God bless you. Deemster ! May you live long and every 
 day of your life be a happy one." 
 
 Back at home, Stowell plunged into the task of drawing up the 
 report for the English authorities which was to accompany the 
 recommendation to mercy. In two days (having his father's 
 library to fall back upon) he knew more about the grounds upon 
 which the prerogative of the Crown could properly be exercised 
 than anybody in the island had ever before been required to learn, 
 and when he had finished his task he had no misgivings. 
 
 Bessie's sentence would be commuted to imprisonment. And 
 then (life for the poor soul being at an end in the Puritanical old 
 island) he must find some secret means of sending her away. 
 
 " Never while that girl . . . . " But wait ! Only wait ! 
 
 Being legislator as well as Judge, he attended the first meet- 
 ing of Tynwald Court after his appointment. The Governor 
 administered the oath to him in a private room, and then, taking 
 his arm, led the way to the legislative chamber. 
 
 " Do you know it's six days since you were at Government 
 House, my boy? What is Fenella to think of you? " 
 
 " Has she .... has she been asking for me. Sir ? " 
 
 " Well, no, not to say asking, but still .... six days, 
 you know." 
 
 Stowell sat on a raised dais between the Attorney-General and 
 Deemster Taubman, who was sufficiently recovered to hobble in on 
 
THE VOICE OF THE SEA 309 
 
 two sticks. The proceedings were of the kind that is usual in such 
 assemblies, the Manx people being the children of their mothers, 
 loving to talk much and about many things. 
 
 He found it difficult to fix his attention, and was watching for 
 an opportunity to slip away, when the vain repetitions which are 
 called debate suddenly ceased and the Governor called on an 
 Inspector by Police to carry round a Bill which had to be signed 
 by all. 
 
 In the interval of general conversation that followed. Deemster 
 Taubman, a gruff and grizzly person, leaned back in his seat, put 
 his thumbs in the armholes of his soiled white waistcoat and 
 talked to StoweU. 
 
 " You did quite right in that case of the girl ColUster, Sir. 
 In fact you were only too indulgent. I have no pity for the 
 huzzies who run away from the consequences of their miscon- 
 duct. Murder is murder, and there is no proper punishment for 
 it but death." 
 
 " But the Jury recommended the girl to mercy, and her sen- 
 tence will be commuted," said StoweU. 
 
 " Eh.? Eh.' Then you haven't heard what has happened? " 
 
 " What.? " 
 
 " The Governor has reported against the recommendation." 
 
 " Reported against it? " 
 
 " Certainly. And as the authorities in London are not likely 
 to read the report and are sure to act on the Governor's advice, 
 the girl will go to the gallows." 
 
 StoweU felt as if he had been struck over the eyes by an unseen 
 hand. As soon as he had signed the Bill (in a trembling scrawl) 
 he whispered to the Attorney-General that he was unwell and 
 fled from the chamber. 
 
 " Humph ! " said Taubman, looking after him. " That young 
 man is going to break down, and no wonder. His appointment as 
 Deemster was the maddest thing I ever knew." 
 
 II 
 
 " No, Mr. StoweU, no ! You must stay in bed for the next 
 two days at least. I must really insist this time. No work, 
 no excitement, no heart-strain. Remember your father, and take 
 my advice. Sir." 
 
 It was Doctor Clucas, who, sent for by Janet, had arrived ait 
 Ballamoar before StoweU got out of bed in the morning. 
 
 With closed eyes StoweU reviewed the situation. It was 
 shocking, horrible, intolerable. Not for fifty years had a woman 
 
310 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 suffered the full penalty of such a crime. He must find some 
 way to prevent it. 
 
 But after a while a terrible temptation came to him. " Why 
 can't I leave things alone.'' " he asked himself. 
 
 He had done all he could be expected to do. If the Crown, 
 acting on the advice of the Governor, refused to exercise its pre- 
 rogative of mercy, what right had he to interfere ? 
 
 It might be best for himself, too, that the law should take its 
 course — best in the long run. If Bessie's sentence were commuted 
 to imprisonment what assurance had he that on coming out of 
 prison she would allow him to send her away from the island .'' 
 On the contrary she might refuse to be banished, and if she found 
 that the blame of her misfortune had fallen on Gell she might tell 
 the truth to free him. 
 
 What then ? He would be a dishonoured man. His position as 
 a Judge would be imperilled ; his marriage with Fenella would be 
 impossible, and his whole life would crash down to a welter of 
 disgrace and ruin. But if Bessie were gone there would be no 
 further danger. And after all, it would not be he but the law 
 that had taken her life. 
 
 " Then why can't I leave things alone ? " he thought. 
 
 He decided to do so, but his decision brought him no comfort. 
 1 Towards evening he got up and went out to walk in the farmyard. 
 There he met Robbie Creer, who was just home from the mill 
 with his head full of a pitiful story. 
 
 It was about Mrs. CoUister. Since her daughter's trial the 
 old woman had fallen into the habit of walking barefoot in the 
 glen, chiefly at midnight, and generally in the neighbourhood of 
 tlie Clagh-ny-Dooiney. At first she had seen a light. Then she 
 had heard a pitiful cry. She was certain it was the cry of a child, 
 a spirit-child, unbaptised and therefore unnamed, and for that 
 reason doomed to wander the world, because unable to enter Para- 
 dise. At length she had taken heart of God and going out in her 
 nightdress she had called through the darkness of the trees, " If 
 thou art a boy I call thee John. If thou art a girl I call thee 
 Joney." After that she had heard the cry no more, and now she 
 knew it had been Bessie's child, and the bogh-millish was at rest. 
 
 This story of the old mother's developing insanity rested 
 heavily on Stowell's heart and went far to shake his resolution. 
 
 After a day or two he began to find his own house and grounds 
 haunted. He could not go into the library without the kind eyes in 
 his mother's picture following him about the room with a pleading 
 look. He could not sit in the dining-room after dinner without 
 remembering his week-ends as a student-at-law, when his father 
 
TBE VOICE OF THE SEA 311 
 
 and he would draw up at opposite cheeks of the hearth, and 
 the great Deemster would talk of the great crimes, the great 
 trials and the great Judges. 
 
 But his worst ordeal was with Janet. Not a word of explana- 
 tion had passed between them, yet he was sure she knew every- 
 thing. One evening, going into her sitting-room, he found her with 
 her knitting on her lap, and a copy of the insular newspaper on 
 the floor, looking out on the lawn with a far-off expression. That 
 brought memories of another evening when he had told her that no 
 girl on the island had ever fallen into trouble through him, or 
 ever should do. 
 
 " Ah ! Is that you, Victor ? " she cried, recovering herself and 
 making her needles click, but he had gone, and her voice followed 
 him from the room. 
 
 Still wrestling with his temptation to stand aside and let the 
 law take its course, Ballamoar became intolerable to him. On the 
 lame excuse of his fortnightly court in the northside town he de- 
 cided to go to Ramsey, and wrote to Mrs. Quayle to get his old 
 rooms ready. 
 
 But going from Ballamoar to his chambers was like leaping 
 out of the fire into the furnace. When he opened a disordered 
 drawer up came the Castletown portrait of Bessie Collister like a 
 ghost out of the gloom. When he went for a walk to tire himself 
 for the night his steps involuntarily turned towards the pier 
 where the lighthouse had been shattered by lightning. When he 
 returned and was putting the key in the lock of his outer door he 
 had the tingling sense of a woman's warm presence behind him. 
 When he pulled down his bedroom blind the broken cord brought a 
 stabbing memory. And when he awoke in the morning he felt that 
 he had only to open his eyes to see a girl's raven black hair on the 
 pillow beside him. 
 
 But Mrs. Quayle's presence was the keenest torment of all. 
 The good old Methodist moved about him at breakfast without 
 speaking, but one morning, fumbling with her bonnet strings 
 before going, she said, 
 
 " Deemster, have you remembered this case of Bessie CoUister 
 in your prayers? " 
 
 He removed to Douglas — the Fort Anne Hotel, a breezy place, 
 which sits on the ledge of the headland and just over the harbour. 
 At first the babble and movement of the hotel distracted him, but 
 after a day or two he was drawn back into the maelstrom of his 
 own thoughts. 
 
 Having a private sitting-room he borrowed law books from the 
 Law Library and sat far into the night to read them. He selected 
 
312 THE U ASTER OF MAN 
 
 the treatises on Infanticide — those bitter records of the age-long 
 strife between the laws of man and of God. Particularly he read 
 the charges of the British Judges (Scottish too frequently), the 
 bewigged ruffians who, in the abomination of iJieir Puritanical 
 tyranny, and the brutal lust of their judicial vengeance, had 
 hounded poor women to the gallows in the very nakedness of shame. 
 
 " Damn them! Damn them! " he would cry, leaping up with 
 a desire to trample on the dead Judges' graves. But then the same 
 persistent voice within would say, " Wait awhile ! Who are you 
 to stand up for justice and mercy? " 
 
 Crushed and ashamed he would creep up to bed through the 
 silent house, and thinliing of the girl whose dark eyes had intoxi- 
 cated him in the glen (the girl he had afterwards held in his 
 arms) he would say, 
 
 " Is it possible that I can stand by and see her given over to 
 the hangman? " 
 
 That terrified him. In the darkness he pictured to himself the 
 scene of Bessie's death and burial, and thought of his after-life as 
 a Judge, when he would have to go to Court to try other such cases 
 — and Bessie lying out there in the prison-yard. 
 
 After Ballamoar, with its pastoral tranquillity, the twittering 
 of birds and the sleepy singing of the streams, Fort Anne was 
 sometimes a tempestuous place, with the wash of the waves in the 
 harbour, the monotonous moan of the sea outside and the melan- 
 choly wail of the gulls. He thought he heard Bessie's cry in the 
 voice of the sea — ^her piercing cry when she was being carried out 
 of Court after he had sentenced her. 
 
 One night he thought Bessie was dead. He was dead too. 
 They were standing side by side in an awful tribunal and she was 
 accusing him before God. 
 
 "He let me die! He killed me! He is my assassin ! " 
 
 The sound of his own voice awakened him. A dream ! It was 
 the grey of dawn; a. storm had risen in the night; the white sea 
 was rolling over the breakwater and the sea-fowl were screaming 
 through the mist and roar. 
 
 No, by God ! If it was a question of Bessie witnessing against 
 him in this world or in the next, he had no longer any doubt which 
 it should be. No more temptations ! No more hypocrisy and 
 self-doubt ! No more wandering about like a lost soul ! 
 
 He would go up to the Governor. He would call upon him to 
 withdraw his objection to the Jury's recommendation. And if he 
 refused .... he should see what he should see. 
 
 At eight o'clock in the morning he was walking down tihe quay 
 in the calm sunshine, looking at the activities of the harbour, and 
 
THE HEART OF A WOMAN 313 
 
 nodding cheerfully to the fishermen as he passed. He was on his 
 way to Government House, and his conscience, with which he had 
 wrestled so long, was triumphant and erect. 
 
 Then came a shock. 
 
 He was crossing the stone bridge that leads up to the town when 
 he saw the Governor's blue landau coming down in the direction of 
 the railway station. It was open. Fenella was sitting in it. 
 
 Stowell was certain she saw him. But she only coloured up to 
 the eyes and dropped her head. At the next instant her carriage 
 had crossed in front of him and swept into the station-yard. 
 
 Something surged in his throat; something blinded his eyes. 
 But after a moment he threw up his head and walked 
 firmly forward. 
 
 " Wait ! Only wait ! We'll see ! " 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE 
 
 THE HEART OF A WOMAN 
 
 Meanwhile Fenella had been going through her own temp- 
 tation. On the night after the trial, having bathed her swollen 
 eyes, she went down to dinner. Her father looked searchingly 
 at her for a moment, and, as soon as they were alone, he said, 
 
 " Was it Stowell I saw driving towards the mountain road as 
 I came up ? " 
 
 " Perhaps it was," said Fenella. 
 
 " Then why didn't he stay to dinner? " 
 
 " Because .... I told him to go." 
 
 " Why? " 
 
 Fenella gulped down the lump that was rising in her throat 
 and said, 
 
 " I have been deceived in him. He is not the man I supposed 
 
 him to be." 
 
 " Don't be a fool, my dear. I understand what you mean. It 
 is his conduct as a man, not as a Judge you are thinking of. But 
 if every woman in the world thought she had a right to make a 
 scrutiny into her husband's life before she married him there 
 would be a fine lot of marriages, wouldn't there? " 
 
 Crude and even coarse as Fenella thought her father's moral 
 philosophy, she found her self -righteousness shaken by it. Per- 
 haps she had been unfair to Stowell. But why didn't he come 
 and plead his own cause? She couldn't talk to her father, but if 
 Victor came and told his own story .... 
 
314 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Victor did not come. For two days her pride fought with her 
 love and she thought herself the unhappiest woman in the world. 
 Then to escape from the pains of self-reproach she conceived the 
 idea of a fierce revenge upon Stowell. She would devote herself 
 to his victim ! Yes, she would make it her duty to lighten the lot 
 of the poor creature he had ruined and deserted. 
 
 After a struggle, and many shameful tears, she went back to 
 Castle Rushen, little knowing what a scorching flame she was to 
 pass through. 
 
 By this time Bessie was feeling no bitterness against Stowell. 
 The jailer had told her that the Deemster could not have acted 
 otherwise. The law compelled him to condemn her. But he had 
 told the Jury to recommend her to mercy, and now he would be 
 writing to the King to ask him to let her off. 
 
 " Aw, he's good, miss — he's real good for all." 
 
 " Do you say that, Bessie.'' After he has betrayed you? " 
 said Fenella, 
 
 " Betrayed? I wouldn't say that, miss." 
 
 " But he .... he took you to his rooms ? " 
 
 " What else could he do, miss ? All the inns were shut and it 
 was raining, and I had nothing in my pocket." 
 
 " But .... having taken advantage of your homelessness 
 and poverty, he afterwards cast you off ? " 
 
 A mysterious wave of injured vanity struggled with Bessie's 
 shame and she said, 
 
 " 'Deed he didn't, then. He wanted to marry me." 
 
 " Marry you .... did you say marry . . . . " 
 
 " Yes, he did, and that was why he sent me to school." 
 
 " But afterwards .... afterwards he changed his mind and 
 turned you off .... I mean turned you over to somebody else ? " 
 
 " 'Deed no," said Bessie, with her chin raised. " It was me 
 that gave him up after I found I was fonder of Alick." 
 
 Breathing hard, scarcely able to speak, with the hot blood 
 rushing to her cheeks, Fenella compelled herself to go on. 
 
 " Did he know then that you . . . . " 
 
 " No, miss, and neither did I, nor Alick, nor anybody." 
 
 " And when .... when was it that you went . . . . " 
 
 "To his rooms in Ramsey? The first Saturday in August, 
 miss." 
 
 Fenella went home, happy, miserable, tingling with shame and 
 yet thrilling with love also. Stowell's victim had brought her 
 heart back to him. 
 
 It was just because he had loved her more tihan he had loved 
 that girl in prison that the worst had happened. It was just 
 
TEE HEART OF A WOMAN 315 
 
 because she herself had persuadedj constrained and almost com- 
 pelled him that he had sat on the case, not fully knowing what 
 was to be revealed by it. 
 
 This lasted her half-way home in the train, and then her 
 wounded pride rose again. After all Victor had been faithless to 
 the love with which she had inspired him. If a man loved a 
 woman it was his duty to keep himself pure for her. Victor had 
 not done so, therefore she would never forgive him — ^never! 
 
 The Governor's carriage met her at the Douglas station, and 
 when (wiping the scorching tears from her eyes) she reached 
 Government House, she found another carriage standing by 
 the porch. 
 
 " Miss Janet Curphey is here to see you, miss," said the maid. 
 
 II 
 
 From the day of the trial, when Victor had returned home with 
 a white face and said, " It doesn't matter now," Janet had known 
 what had occurred. 
 
 That CoUister girl had corrupted Victor. She had always 
 feared it would be so since " Auntie Kitty " had whispered over 
 her counter that that " forward thing " of Liza Corteen's was 
 boasting that Mr. Stowell had been " sooreying " with her in the 
 glen. And now she had brought him under the very shadow of 
 shame itself, just when life looked so bright and joyful. 
 
 Then came the insular newspaper with an account of Fenella's 
 outburst at the trial. That was the cruellest blow of all. She 
 had loved Fenella, and had always thought there would be nothing 
 so sweet as to spread her wedding-bed for her, but now that she 
 had taken sides against Victor and publicly denounced him, 
 Janet's blood boiled. She would go up to Government House and 
 give Fenella a piece of her mind. Why shouldn't she .'' 
 
 It was a dull afternoon when she set off for Douglas, and as she 
 drove along the coast road she rehearsed to herself the sharp 
 things she was going to say. 
 
 But when Fenella came into the drawing-room, looking so pale 
 as to be scarcely recognisable as the radiant girl she used to be, 
 and kissed her and sat by her side, Janet could scarcely 
 say anything. 
 
 At length (Miss Green, who had been sitting at tea with her, 
 having gone) Janet braced herself, and said, not without a tremor, 
 
 " I've come about Victor." 
 
 " Then he has told you? " said Fenella. 
 
 " 'Deed he hasn't, and you needn't either, because I know." 
 
316 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Fenella drew her hand away and dropped her 'head. 
 
 " I don't say he hasn't done wrong," said Janet, " but you 
 seem to think he's the only one who is to blame." 
 
 " Oh no ! I see now that the girl in Castle Rushen . . . . " 
 
 "The girl? I'm not thinking about the girl. Of course «Ae is 
 to blame. But is there nobody else to blame also .'' " 
 
 "Who else?" 
 
 " Yourself." 
 
 "Janet!" 
 
 " Oh, I'm telling you the truth, dear. That's what I've 
 come for." 
 
 " But it all happened before I returned to the Island." 
 
 " That's why. If you hadn't stayed away so long it wouldn't 
 have happened at all." 
 
 Then up from the sweet and sorrowful places of Janet's mem- 
 ory came the story of Stowell's love for Fenella — how he had 
 worked for her and waited for her through all his long years as 
 a student-at-law. 
 
 " It's me to know, my dear. He used to come home every 
 week-end, and his poor father thought it was to see him, but I 
 knew better. ' Any fresh news ? ' he would say, and I knew what 
 news he wanted. When your photo came he held it under the lamp 
 and said, ' Don't you think she's like my mother, Janet — ^just a 
 little like? ' And I told him yes, and that was to say you were 
 like the loveliest woman that ever walked the world — ^in this 
 island anyway." 
 
 Fenella was struggling to control herself. 
 
 " Poor boy, how he worked and worked for you ! Jacob never 
 worked harder or waited longer for Rachel. And what was his 
 reward? You signed on at your ridiculous Settlement for seven 
 years and sent word you would never marry. I had it from 
 Catharine Green and it was a sorrowful woman I was to break 
 the news to him. He looked at me with his mother's eyes, and 
 it was fit enough to break my heart to see how he cried with his 
 face on the pillow. But it was with his father's eyes he rose and 
 said, ' It shall never happen again, mother.' He called me 
 mother too, God bless him ! " 
 
 Fenella was smothering her mouth in her handkerchief. 
 
 " If he went wrong after that, was it any wonder? Young 
 men are young men, and the Lord won't be too hard on them for 
 being what He has made them. Some people seem to think when 
 trouble comes between a young man and a young woman that the 
 young woman is the only one to be pitied. Well, I'm a woman 
 
THE HEART OF A WOMAN 317 
 
 and I don't. And when a young man has been cut off from the 
 love that would have kept him right and the heavens have gone 
 dark on him . . . . " 
 
 " But I loved him all the time, Janet." 
 
 " Then why didn't you come back, instead of leaving him to 
 the mercy of these good-looking young vixens who will run any 
 risks with a young man if they can only get him to marry them ? " 
 
 Fenella's eyes were down again. 
 
 " But that's not all. Not content with deserting him for so 
 many years, you must try to disgrace him also." 
 
 "Janet!" 
 
 " Oh, I saw what you said at the trial." 
 
 " But nobody knows whom I .... " 
 
 " Don't they indeed ! The men may not — most of them are so 
 stupid. They may even think you meant somebody else. But you 
 can't deceive the women like that. And then he knew that you 
 intended it for him. Just when you were about to become his wife, 
 too, and you were the only woman in the world to him ! " 
 
 " I was so shocked. I thought he wasn't the man I had taken 
 him for." 
 
 " Perhaps he wasn't, perhaps he was, but thousands of women 
 have lost faith in their men and clung to them for all that, and 
 they're the salt of the earth, I say. I'm only an old maid myself, 
 but to stand up for your husband, right or wrong, that's what / 
 call being a wife, if you ask me." 
 
 Fenella could bear up no longer. She flung her arms about 
 Janet's neck and buried her face in her breast. 
 
 The darkness was gathering before they broke from their 
 embrace and then it was time for Janet to smooth out her silvery 
 hair and go. Fenella saw her to the carriage and whispered as 
 she kissed her, 
 
 " Tell him to come back to me." 
 
 And then Janet went home with shining eyes. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Day after day Fenella waited at home for Victor, denying 
 herself to everybody else. Every afternoon she dressed herself in 
 some gown he had said he liked her in. She dressed her hair, too, 
 in the way he liked best. But still he did not come. 
 
 At length she determined to write to him. Writing was a 
 terrible ordeal. Her pride fought with her love and she could 
 never satisfy herself with 'her letters. First it was — 
 
318 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Dear Victor, — Don't you really think you've stayed 
 away long enough? Remember your ' Manx ones ' — espe- 
 cially your lovely and beloved Manx women — ^won't they 
 be talking? " 
 
 But no, that was too much like threatening him, so she 
 began again — 
 
 " Darling, — Did you really think I meant all I said 
 that day? Don't you know a woman better than that? I 
 suppose you think I am very hard-hearted and can never 
 forgive, but . . . . " 
 
 No, that was wrong, too. 
 
 " Victor, — Don't you think I have been punished 
 enough? It has been very hard for me, yet I love you 
 still . . . . " 
 
 But the trembling of her handwriting betrayed the emotion 
 she wished to conceal. At last, after a long day of solitude and 
 abandonment, two little lines — 
 
 " Vic, — I am so lonely. Come to me. Your broken- 
 hearted — Fenella." 
 
 But all her letters, with their cries and supplications, were 
 torn up and thrown into the fire. 
 
 Mty did he stay away? Did he expect her to bridge all the 
 gulf between them? At length she thought he must be ill. The 
 idea that he could be suffering (for her sake perhaps) swept down 
 all her pride, and she determined to go to him. 
 
 But just as she was setting out for Ballamoar somebody 
 brought word that Stowell was staying at Fort Anne. That 
 quenched her humility. So near, yet never coining to see her ! 
 Oh, very well ! Very well ! 
 
 For two days she felt crushed and abased. Then she heard 
 that Stowell was constantly to be seen at the Law Library, and 
 that brought a memory and an explanation. She remembered that 
 she had said (in that wild moment when she didn't know what 
 she was saying) that she would never forgive him while the girl 
 Bessie lay in prison. 
 
 That was it! He was finding a solid legal ground on which 
 the prisoner could be liberated, and when he had convinced the 
 law officers of the Crown that this was a proper case for the exer- 
 cise of mercy, he would come up to her and say, " Bessie Collister 
 is free ! — ^bhe barrier between us is broken down." 
 
THE HEART OF A WOMAN 319 
 
 For a full day after that her heart was at ease. Nay more, 
 she was almost happy, for hidden away in some secret place of 
 semi-consciousness was the thought that the measure of StoweU's 
 efforts for Bessie Collister was the meter of his love for herself. 
 
 At length her impatience got the better of her tranquillity and 
 she became eager to know what was going on. There was only 
 one person who could tell her that — ^her father. 
 
 Coming down to breakfast on the sunny morning after the 
 storm, she saw, among the letters by the Governor's plate, a large 
 envelope superscribed, "HOME SECRETARY." When her 
 father had opened it she said, as if casually, 
 
 " Any news yet about that poor thing in Castle Ruahen.? " 
 
 " Yes, there's something here." 
 
 " Of course she's pardoned? " 
 
 " On the contrary, her death-sentence has been confirmed." 
 
 " Confirmed? "- 
 
 " Yes, she's to die, and it only remains for me to fix the date 
 •f the execution." 
 
 The sun went out as before a thunderstorm, and, rising from 
 her unfinished breakfast, Fenella fled from the room. A great 
 wave of pity seemed' to sweep down every other feeling. She 
 determined to go to Castle Rushen again and break the news 
 tenderly to the unhappy woman. 
 
 On her way to the railway station her mind swung back to 
 StoweU. After all he could have done nothing to save the girl's 
 life. It was inconceivable that the authorities in London could 
 have been indifferent to the opinion of the Judge who had tried 
 the case. 
 
 " No, he can have done nothing — nothing whatever." 
 
 Then came a shock to her also. 
 
 As her carriage dipped into the hill going down to the station 
 she saw StoweU coming up from the bridge with rapid strides. 
 Something told her that, having heard the news, he was going to 
 Government House to protest. But what was the good of going 
 now ? Useless ! Worse than useless ! 
 
 One glance she got of his face before she dropped her own. 
 It was whiter and thinner than before, as if from sleepless nights 
 and Buffering. She wanted to stop ; she wanted to go on ; she did 
 not know what she wanted. 
 
 At the next moment her coachman, who had seen nothing of 
 StoweU, being occupied with the diflSculties of the hill, had swept 
 into the station-yard. 
 
 When she got out of the carriage her heart was burning with 
 the pangs of mingled love and rage. 
 
320 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " If that girl dies in prison there shall never be anything 
 between us — ^never," she thought. , 
 
 But deep in her heart, almost unknown to herself, there was 
 a still more poignant cry, 
 
 " He does not care for me — he cannot." 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR 
 
 THE MAN AND THE iAW 
 
 When Stowell reached Government House he found the Gov- 
 ernor in the garden, bareheaded and smoking a cigar of which 
 he was obviously trying to preserve the ash, while he watched 
 his gardener at his work of repairing the ravages of last night's 
 storm among the flower-beds. 
 
 " Ah, you've come at last! But you have just missed Fenella. 
 She has gone to Castletown — that girl again, I suppose." 
 
 " I know. I saiw her. That's the^ mattey I've come to 
 speak about." 
 
 " So ? Oblige me then by walking here so that I may keep an 
 eye on the gardener." 
 
 Stowell winced, but stepped to and fro on the path by the 
 Governor's side while in a low tone he broached his business. 
 
 " Deemster Taubman told me at Tynwald that you had re- 
 ported against the Jury's recommendation." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I thought perhaps you would permit me to explain the exact 
 legal position." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " It is fifty years at least since the prisoner has been exe- 
 cuted on this island for that crime." 
 
 " Fifty, is it? " 
 
 The Governor blew his light blue smoke into the lighter blue 
 air and watched it rising. 
 
 " Deemster Taubman seems to think that a prisoner who has 
 wilfully taken life is necessarily a murderer. That is wrong. Sir." 
 
 "Wrong?" 
 
 " Quite wrong. It is established by the laws of this and 
 every civilised country that it is the reason of man which makes 
 him accountable for his action and the absence of reason acquits 
 him of the crime." 
 
 " And is there any ground for thinking that this girl was not 
 responsible? " said the Governor. 
 
THE MAN AND THE LAW 321 
 
 " Every ground, Sir. No woman in her position ever was or 
 can be responsible." 
 
 " No.' .... Gardener, don't you think those tulips . . . . " 
 
 " That's why the law of England," continued Stowell, " has 
 ceased to look upon infanticide as a crime punishable Iby death. 
 In some foreign countries it is not looked upon as a crime at all. 
 The woman who kills her child within five days after its birth is 
 thought to be suffering from temporary mania and therefore not 
 guilty of murder. Besides . . . . " • 
 
 " Besides — what ? " 
 
 Stowell breathed heavily and then said, 
 
 " There are exceptional circumstances in this case which call 
 for merciful treatment." 
 
 " You mean . . . . " 
 
 " I mean," said Stowell, speaking rapidly and in a vibrating 
 voice, " that the girl had no bad motives such as usually inspire 
 murder — no greed, no lust, no desire for revenge. In fact, she 
 meant no harm to anybody. On the contrary it is conceivable that 
 she meant good — good even to her child — ^to save it from a life of 
 suffering in a world in which it would have no father, no family, 
 and nobody to care for it but its shamed and outcast mother." 
 
 The Governor looked ait Stowell for a moment and thought. 
 
 " He's ill, and he's trying to unload his conscience." 
 
 Then he said aloud, 
 
 " So you've come to ask me to .... " 
 
 " I've come to ask you. Sir, to withdraw your objection to the 
 recommendation to mercy, so that the death sentence may be 
 commuted to imprisonment." 
 
 Again the Governor looked at Stowell's heated face and 
 thought, " Yes, he'll ill, and doesn't see that I am fighting his 
 own battle." 
 
 " Do it. Sir," said Stowell. " Do it, for God's sake, before 
 it is too late, and there is such an outcry throughout the kingdom 
 as will shake the very foundations of justice in the island." 
 
 The Governor was still smoking leisurely and keeping his eye 
 on his flower-beds. 
 
 " Gardener, don't you think that bed of geraniums . . . . " 
 he began, but Stowell could bear no more. 
 
 " Good God, Sir, isn't this matter of sufficient importance to 
 merit your attention.'' " 
 
 The Governor turned sharply upon him, threw away his half- 
 smoked cigar and said, 
 
 " Come this way." 
 21 
 
322 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Not another word was spoken until, returning to the house 
 with a certain pomp of stride, with Stowell behind him, the Gover- 
 nor reached his room and closed the door behind him. Then, 
 unlocking his desk, he took out a large envelope (the same that 
 Fenella had seen at breakfast) and handed the contents of it to 
 Stowell, saying, 
 
 " Look at that." 
 
 Stowell saw at a glance what it was and uttered a cry of 
 astonishment. 
 
 " Then it's done." 
 
 " Yes, it's done. And now sit down and listen to me." 
 
 But Stowell continued to stand with the paper crinkling in 
 his trembling fingers. 
 
 " You say Taubman told you I reported against the Jury's 
 recommendation. Quite true! As President of the Court and 
 head of the Manx judiciary, I told the Home Secretary I saw no 
 justification for it — ^no justification whatever." 
 
 Stowell was silent. 
 
 " You say it is fifty years since such a crime has been punished! 
 by death. Perhaps it is, but the fact that the Statute remains is 
 proof enough that the law contemplates cases in which it may 
 properly be exercised. This in my view was such a case and I 
 had every right to say so." 
 
 Still Stowell remained silent. 
 
 " You say the prisoner may have acted from a good motive. I 
 see no good motive in a mother who takes the life of her child. 
 You speak of her shame, but shame is no excuse for crime. Why 
 shouldn't such women sufi"er shame? Shame is the just conse- 
 quence of their evil conduct, and to try to escape from it by making 
 away with their misbegotten children is crime." 
 
 Stowell was trembling but still silent. 
 
 " Pity for women of that sort is sentimental weakness. Worse, 
 it is a danger to public safety. The sooner such people are put 
 out of the world the better for the public good." 
 
 There was a palpable silence on both sides for some moments. 
 The Governor glanced at Stowell's twitching face and began to be 
 sorry for him. " Good Lord ! " he thought, " why can't the man 
 see that it's best for himself that the girl should die ? As long as 
 she lives the wretched scandal may break out again and his own 
 share in it may come to light. And then Fenella ! How could I 
 allow her to marry him with that danger hanging over his head ? " 
 
 Stowell's fingers were contracting over the paper that crinkled 
 in his hand. At length he threw it on the desk and said. 
 
THE MAN AND THE LAW 323 
 
 " Your Excellency, if you carry out that sentence you will be 
 committing a crime — a monstrous judicial crime." 
 
 The Governor returned the paper to his desk, and then rose and 
 said, with a ring of sarcasm in his voice, 
 
 "So I am the criminal, am I? Well, I am responsible for 
 public security in this island, and as long as I am here I am going 
 to see that it is preserved. Offences of this kind have been too 
 frequent of late and they can only be put down by law. The 
 prisoner in the present case has been justly tried and rightly con- 
 demned, and it shall be my business to see that she pays the 
 penalty of her crime." 
 
 Stowell's pale face had become scarlet, his lower lip was 
 trembling. Onitside the sea was sparkling in the sunlight; a band 
 was playing far off on the promenade. 
 
 " Your Excellency," said Stowell, quivering all over, " it wiU 
 be a life-long grief to me to resist your authority, but I must tell 
 you at once that if you order that girl's execution it shall never 
 be carried out." 
 
 " What do you say.' " 
 
 " I say it shall never be carried out." 
 
 " Why not? " 
 
 " Because / shall prevent it." 
 
 The Governor rose. His face was red, his throat had swelled ; 
 his lips were compressed. 
 
 " Do you mean that you will go over my head . . . . " 
 
 " I do .... " 
 
 The Governor brushed Stowell aside in making for the bell. 
 
 " There's no heed for that. I'm going, Sir," said Stowell, and 
 at the next moment the Governor was alone in his room, speechless 
 with astonishment and wrath. 
 
 Going down the corridor Stowell passed the open door of the 
 library — the room in which he had parted from Fenella. In 
 quarrelling with her father had he burnt the last bridge by which 
 Fenella and he could come together? 
 
 " But, God forgive me, I could do nothing else — ^nothing 
 whatever." 
 
 II 
 
 Fenella found that the tragic news had reached Castle Rushen 
 before her. 
 
 Bessie had received it at first with increduility. Her expecta- 
 tion of pardon had reached the point of conviction, and every 
 morning as she rose from her plank bed, she had said to herself, 
 " It will e<»nse to-day." 
 
324 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 When Tommy Vondy went into the condemned cell, blowing 
 his nose repeatedly and talking about death, how it came to every- 
 body sooner or later, Bessie looked at him with terror and 
 screamed, " Oh, God help me ! God help me ! " 
 
 For a while she raved like a madwoman. Everybody had lied 
 to her and deceived her, and the Deemster had done nothing to 
 save her, because he wanted her out of the way. 
 
 But after a while an idea occurred to her and She became calm. 
 Alick Gell! If Alick would go up to London and see the King 
 and tell him that she had never intended to kill her baby he would 
 forgive her. And then Alick would come galloping back, at 
 the last moment perhaps, waving a paper over his head and 
 crying, "Stop!" 
 
 She had seen such things in her illustrated Weekly Budget — 
 the story paper she used to read on Sunday mornings at home, 
 while the dinner was cooking in the oven-pot and her mother was 
 singing hymns in the Primitive chapel and her father was poring 
 over the " Mistakes of Moses." 
 
 But would he do it? She had deceived him twice. And then 
 his sisters had always been trying to drag him away from her. 
 
 All at once, like the echo of a bell through a thick mist over 
 the sea, came the memory of his cry as she was being carried out 
 of Court: " Never mind, Bessie, I would rather be you than 
 your Judge ! " 
 
 Yes, he loved her still, and (out of the cunning which the air of 
 a prison breeds) a scheme flashed upon her. She would write a 
 letter to Alick Gell, not telling him what she wanted him to do, 
 but plainly pointing to it. 
 
 Fenella was amazed to find Bessie apparently reconciled to 
 her end. She had expected torrents of tears and even the coarse 
 language of the farmyard. 
 
 " The suspense was the worst. I shall be glad when it's all 
 over," said Bessie. 
 
 The only thing that troubled her was to die while Alick was 
 thinking so hard' of her, and if her hand did not shake so much 
 she would write to ask for his forgiveness. 
 
 " I'll write for you," said Fenella. 
 
 " And will you give the letter into his own hands, miss, so 
 that his sisters may not see it? " 
 
 " I'll try, dear." 
 
 Sitting by the door of the cell, under the light from the grill, 
 Fenella wrote with the prison paper on her lap, while Bessie, with- 
 out a vestige of colour in her forlorn face, dictated from the bed: 
 
TEE MAN AND THE LAW 325 
 
 "Dear Alick, — You will have heard what they are 
 going to do to me. It is dreadful, isn't it? I thought per- 
 haps you would have written me a few lines, though I know 
 it is too much to expect after all the sorrow and shame I 
 have brought on you. 
 
 " Oh, if I could only have lived to make it up to you ! 
 We could have gone away, as you always said, to America or 
 somewhere. I should have been so good, and we should 
 have been so happy and nobody to cast all this up to us. 
 
 " What I did was very wrong, but I don't see what good 
 it will do to the King to take my life, and me a poor girl he 
 never saw in the world. I still think if there were anybody 
 to speak for me he would forgive me even yet and everything 
 wovJd be all right. But that's more than anybody would do 
 for me now, I suppose — even you, though I have always 
 loved you so dear." 
 
 Bessie paused. 
 
 " Is that all } '■' asked Fenella, in a husky whisper. 
 
 " Not quite," said Bessie, and she began again. 
 
 " Mother was here last week and brought me your photo. 
 It got wet in my bag on the way from Derby Haven, and it 
 is cracked and smudged. But I kiss it constant and it is 
 such company. 
 
 " Good-bye, Alick ! My last thoughts wiU be of you and 
 my last prayer that God will bless you. If I could only 
 see you for a minute I think I should be satisfied. But if 
 you can't come, write and say you forgive me. It has been 
 all through my love for you that I am here, so think the 
 best of me." 
 
 Bessie signed the letter, filling up the remaining space with 
 crosses, and then wrote with her own hand — 
 
 " P.S. — It's a weak to-day, so if anjrthing is to be done 
 there's no time to lose." 
 
 Fenella saw through the girl's pitiful subterfuge, but knew 
 well that Gell could do nothing. There was only one man in the 
 island who could have saved Bessie, and that was the Judge who 
 had tried her. 
 
 Why hadn't he? 
 
326 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 All the way home in the train Fenella asked herself this ques- 
 tion. The only answer she could find was that Stowell was afraid 
 of offending the Governor, owing so much to him. But oh, if he 
 had only resisted her father in this case — standing up against him 
 and fearing no one — how she would have loved him ! 
 
 She found Government House shuddering with awe, as if a 
 tornado had swept through it and gone. At length Miss Green 
 explained what had happened. Mr. Stowell had called to see the 
 Governor and been turned out of the house! 
 
 Hardly had she reached her room when her father followed 
 her into it. 
 
 " I suppose you know that Stowell has been here? " he said. 
 
 " Yes. What did he come for? " 
 
 " To threaten me — that's what he came for. To threaten me 
 that if I attempted to carry out the sentence of the law on that 
 girl in Castle Eushen he would prevent it." 
 
 Fenella tried to conceal the joy that was rising within her. 
 
 " What do you think he intends to do ? " she asked. 
 
 " Appeal to the Home Secretary against me, I suppose. I 
 shouldn't wonder if he leaves the island in the morning. And if 
 he does, and brings back a pardon, it will be a vote of censure 
 upon me — ^nothing short of it." 
 
 The Governor strode across the room in his wrath, and then 
 suddenly drew up on seeing that Fenella was smiling. 
 
 " But I see who is the cause of the man's insane conduct," 
 he said. 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " You ! You've broken with him, haven't you ? Because he 
 had the misfortune to encounter that woman long ago you hold him 
 responsible for everything she has done since. So to satisfy your 
 ridiculous qualms he falls back upon me. The fool ! The damned 
 fool ! And you are no better ! I don't know what's taking posses- 
 sion of women in these days. I'm sick to death of their feminist 
 imbecilities and the braying of their male asses ! " 
 
 " But father . . . . " 
 
 " Don't talk to me," said the Governor, and with blazing eyes 
 he swept out of the room. 
 
 Then Victor had done something ! He did care for her ! And 
 now he was going to take some great risk to save the life of the 
 girl in prison. 
 
 A momentary qualm about her duty to her father was swept 
 down by the tide of her love for Stowell. After all, he was the 
 man she had thought him to be ! God bless and speed him ! 
 
"AND GOD MADE MAN OF THE DUST" 327 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE 
 
 AND GOD MADE MAN OF THE DUST OF THE GROUND " 
 
 Stowell had travelled far by this time. 
 
 When he left Government House in the heat and flame of his 
 anger he was at war with God and man. There was a kind of 
 self-defence in thinking that, however deep his own wrong-doing, 
 the whole world was full of infamy. 
 
 He found that news of the forthcoming execution had reached 
 Fort Anne before he returned to it. To avoid the whispering 
 groups in the public rooms he packed his bag and took the after- 
 noon train to Ballamoar. 
 
 Alone in the railway carriage he had time to review the situa- 
 tion. His visit to the Governor had been a wretched failure. But 
 even if it had been a success what would have been the result to 
 Bessie Collister? Substitution of the jail for the gallows. In- 
 stead of death, three years, five years, perhaps ten years' imprison- 
 ment. Thank God he had not succeeded! 
 
 " But what am I to do now.'' " he asked himself. 
 
 Appeal to London ? Useless ! The Home officials would sup- 
 port the resident authority, and, having made a hideous error, they 
 would be reluctant to correct it. 
 
 " Then what can I do ? " he thought. 
 
 Suddenly he saw that every argument he had used with the 
 Governor against putting Bessie to death applied equally to keep- 
 ing her in prison. This was not a question of degrees of guilt — - 
 of murder or manslaughter. Either Bessie was guilty of murder 
 and ought to be executed or she was not guilty (not being respon- 
 sible) and ought to be set at liberty. 
 
 " Then the law under which she has been condemned is a 
 crime," he thought. 
 
 This terrified him. All his inherited instinct of reverence for 
 the justice and majesty of the law revolted. 
 
 " The law a crime ! Good heavens, what am I thinking 
 about? " 
 
 And yet why not? Why had there been so much misery in the 
 world? Wajs it because of the crimes committed against the law? 
 No, but chiefly because of the crimes committed by the law. Yes, 
 that was the real key to the long martyrdom of man throughout 
 the ages. 
 
 " If a law is a crime it ought to be broken," he told himself. 
 
 But how ! There was only one proper way in a free coimtry — 
 through Parliament and by the slow uprising of the human con- 
 
328 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 science. But that was a long process, and meantime what would 
 happen in this case? Bessie would be dead and buried! That 
 must not be! No, the law that had condemned Bessie CoUister 
 must be broken at once — ^now ! 
 
 " But who is to break it? '' 
 
 He trembled at that question, but found only one answer. It 
 shivered at the back of his mind Uke the white water over a reef 
 at the neck of a narrow sea, and it was not at first that he dared to 
 think of it. But at length he saw that since he had been the 
 instrument of the law in dooming Bessie to death it was he who 
 must set her free. 
 
 When he reached this point on his dark way he was horrified. 
 
 " What? A Judge break the law! " 
 
 He thought of his oath as Deemster and of the execration that 
 would fall on him if found out. He remembered his father's 
 motto: " Justice is the most sacred thing on earth." No, no, it 
 was impossible ! His honour as a Judge forbade it. 
 
 But, as the train ran on, the call of nature conquered and he 
 asked himself what, after all, was his honour as a Judge compared 
 with that poor girl's life? 
 
 "Nothing! Nothing!" 
 
 Bessie CoUister must not die ! She must not remain in prison ! 
 She must escape ! He must help her to do so. Secretly, though, 
 nobody knowing, not even the girl herself or Fenella. 
 
 At St. John's, a junction between the north of the island and 
 the south, the Bishop of the island stepped into Stowell's compart- 
 ment. He had been holding a confirmation service at a neigh- 
 bouring church, and a company of young girls, in white muslin 
 frocks, were seeing him ofi^ from the platform. While the car- 
 riages were being coupled he stood at the open door and said 
 good-bye to them. 
 
 " And now go home, dear children, and have your suppers and 
 get to bed. Home, sweet home, you know ! " 
 
 But the children would not go until they had sung again in their 
 sweet young voices the hymn they had just been singing in church 
 — " Now the day is over." By the time the engine whistled and 
 the train was moving out of the station, they had reached 
 the verse — 
 
 " Comfort every sufferer. 
 Watching late in pain. 
 Those mho plan some evil 
 From their sin restrain." 
 
'AND QOD MADE MAN OF THE DUST" 329 
 
 Stowell dare not look at them. He was thinking of the girl in 
 Castle Rushen and picturing to himself a similar scene of j oy and 
 innocence which might have taken place only a few years before in 
 the station by the glen. 
 
 " Ah ! " said the Bishop, settling himself in his seat. 
 
 He was a short, dapper, almost dainty little man, who talked 
 continually like the brook that often runs behind a Manx cottage 
 and fills it with cheerful chatter. 
 
 " I suppose you've heard the news. Deemster ? " 
 
 He produced a small evening newspaper. 
 
 " That poor young person in Castle Rushen is to be executed 
 after all! Terrible, isn't it? " 
 
 Stowell bent his head. 
 
 " I really thought that after your address to the Jury she would 
 have been pardoned. But who am I to set up my opinion against 
 that of the King's advisers .'' And then think of the eif ect of bad 
 example ! Those dear children, for instance, they are not too 
 young to remember. And if that unhappy girl had got off who 
 knows what effect . . . . " 
 
 Stowell, nursing the fires of his rebellion, hardly heard the run- 
 ning stream of commonplace. 
 
 " And then Holy Wedlock ! I always say that every act of 
 carnal transgression is a sin against the marriage altar." 
 
 The train was running along the western coast; the sun was 
 setting; the Irish mountains were purple against the red glow 
 of the sky behind them. 
 
 " And then think of the poor soul herself ! It may be best for 
 her too ! God knows to what depths she might have descended ! " 
 
 Stowell wanted to burst out on the Bishop, but a secret voice 
 within him whispered, " Hold your tongue ! Say nothing ! " 
 
 " All the same, I'm sorry for the poor creature, and only yes- 
 terday I was using my influence to get her into a Refuge Home 
 for Fallen Women across the water." 
 
 The train drew up at the station for Bishop's Court, and the 
 Bishop, after a cheerful adieu, hopped like a bird along the plat- 
 form to where his carriage stood waiting for him, with its two 
 high-stepping horses and its coachman in livery. 
 
 Stowell's heart was afire. 
 
 " Refuge Home ! Send some of your fashionable women to 
 your Refuge Homes! Holy Wedlock! There are more fallen 
 women inside your Holy Wedlock than outside of it ! " 
 
 At the station for the glen Stowell got out himself, and there he 
 saw a different spectacle — an elderly woman in a satin mantle, sur- 
 rounded by a group of other elderly women in faded sun-bonnets. 
 
330 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 It was Mrs. CoUister again. In one hand she held her black- 
 thorn stick, and in the other she carried a small bundle in a print 
 handkerchief — ^probably containing her underclothing. 
 
 Stowell understood. The news about Bessie had reached her 
 home, and the heart-broken (almost brain-broken) old mother was 
 waiting for the south-going train to Castletown. 
 
 A hush fell on the women when Stowell stepped out of the rail- 
 way carriage, but as he made his way to his dog-cart at the gate, 
 he heard one of them say, 
 
 " It's a wicked shame ! But you'll be with the poor bogh at the 
 end and that will comfort her." 
 
 A kind of savage pride had taken possession of Stowell. 
 
 " Not yet! Not yet! " he thought. 
 
 The law was wrong, therefore it was right to resist the law. 
 It was more than right — it was a kind of sacred duty. 
 
 II 
 
 From that time forward the Judge went about like a criminal. 
 
 He stayed at home the following day to think out his plans. 
 All his schemes revolved about Castle Eushen. The great, grey, 
 bastioned fortress — how was he to get the prisoner out of it? 
 
 His first idea was to use the jailer, who was a simple soul and 
 had obligations to his family. But he abandoned this thought 
 rather from fear of the old man's garrulous tongue than from 
 qualms of conscience. 
 
 It was Tuesday, and Bessie's execution had been fixed for the 
 Monday following, but the day passed without bringing any 
 better thought to him. 
 
 Somewhere in the dark reaches of Wednesday morning an idea 
 flashed upon him. It was usual for one of the Deemsters to make 
 an annual examination of the prisons of the island, the time being 
 subject to his own convenience. Stowell determined to make his 
 examination of Castle Rushen now. 
 
 At eleven o'clock he was going round the Castle with the 
 jailer. There were two sides to the prison, a debtor side and a 
 criminal side, and they went over both — ^the jailer complaining of 
 decaying doors and rusty padlocks, and the Deemster, with a sense 
 of shame, pretending to make notes of them, while his eyes and his 
 mind were on other matters. 
 
 " Not much chance of a prisoner escaping from a place like 
 this, Mr. Vondy." 
 
 "Not a ha'porth! Those old Normans knew how to keep 
 
" AUD QOD MADE MAN OF THE DUST" 331 
 
 people out — and in too, Sir. But there's one cell you haven't 
 looked at yet, your Honour — the girl CoUister's." 
 
 " We'll leave her alone, Mr. Vondy. How is she now, poor 
 creature? " 
 
 "Wonderful! That cheerful and smart you wouldn't be- 
 lieve. Sir." 
 
 " Then she doesn't know . . . . " 
 
 " 'Deed she does. Sir. But she thinks Mr. Gell, the advocate, 
 is up in London getting her pardon, and she's listening and listen- 
 ing for his foot coming back with it." 
 
 Stowell went to bed on Wednesday night also without any 
 scheme for Bessie CoUister's escape. But in the grey dawn of 
 Thursday morning, when the world was awakening from a heavy 
 sleep, another idea came to him. The Antiquarian Society of the 
 island had made him a Vice-President when he became a Deemster, 
 and having opened up certain portions of the Castle that were 
 outside the precincts of the prison, they had asked Jiim to inspect 
 their discoveries. 
 
 With another spasm of hope, Stowell returned to Castletown. 
 
 " Give me your lantern, and let me wander about by myself, 
 Mr. Vondy." 
 
 " 'Deed I will. Sir. Your Honour knows the Castle as well 
 as I do." 
 
 There was said to be a subterranean passage under the harbour 
 for escape in case of siege. Stowell found it (a noisome, slimy, 
 rat-infested place, dripping with water) but the further end of it 
 had been walled up. 
 
 There was a foul dungeon in which a Bishop had been con- 
 fined when he came into collision with the civil authorities, and 
 tradition had it that he had preached through a window to his 
 people on the quay. Stowell found that also, but the window was 
 narrow and barred. 
 
 There were ramparts round the four-square walls, but on one 
 side they looked down into the back yards of the little houses that 
 lay against the great fortress and on the other three sides they 
 were exposed to the market-place, the Parliament-square and 
 the harbour. 
 
 For the second time Stowell went home in the lowering night- 
 fall with a heavy heart. As the time approached for the execution 
 his agitation increased, and on Thursday night also he tossed about, 
 thinking, thinking. At length he remembered something. He had 
 a key to the Deemster's private entrance to the Castle, and though 
 the door was always bolted on the inside, a plan of escape 
 occurred to him. 
 
«»2 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 On Friday morning lie was in the jailer's room. It had been 
 the guard-room of the Castle and was hung about with souvenirs 
 of earlier times — maps, plans, a cutlass that had been captured in 
 a fight with Spanish pirates, a blunderbuss that had been used by 
 Manx Fencibles, a keyboard, a line of handcuffs, and a rope, in a 
 glass case, that had been used in the hanging of a Manx criminal. 
 
 " You haven't many prisoners in the Castle now, Mr. Vondy? " 
 
 " Aw, no ! Didn't your Honour discharge all but one at the 
 last General Gaol? " 
 
 " And not much company? " 
 
 " Only Willie Shimmin, the turnkey, and he's a drunken gom- 
 meral, always wanting out, and never sure of coming back at all." 
 
 " What about your female warder? " 
 
 " Mrs. Mylrea ? A dying woman. Sir. Not been here since 
 the trial, and if it wasn't for Miss Stanley . . . . " 
 
 " Does she come often? " 
 
 " Nearly every day now. Sir." 
 
 At that moment there was the clang of a bell. 
 
 " There she is, I'll go bail," said the jailer, and snatching a, 
 big key from the keyboard he turned to go. 
 
 In the collapse of his better nature Stowell was afraid to meet 
 Fenella, knowing well she would see through him. 
 
 " Don't trouble about me, or mention that I'm here," he said, 
 and picking up his lantern he made a show of going on with 
 his researches. 
 
 But as soon as the j ailer had disappeared he turned rapidly to 
 the Deemster's door and had opened it and stepped out and closed 
 it behind him, before the j ailer and Fenella (whose voices he could 
 hear) had emerged from the Portcullis into the court-yard. 
 
 It was done ! Light had fallen on him at last. Now he knew 
 how Bessie CoUister was to escape from Castle Rushen. 
 
 But it was not enough that Bessie should escape from her 
 prison ; she must escape from the island also ; and to do so by 
 means of the regular steam packet from Douglas to England was 
 impossible. Was this to be another and still greater difficulty? 
 
 The tide was up in the harbour and the fishing-boats were 
 making ready to go out for the night. As Stowell walked down 
 the quay he saw a blue-coated and brass-buttoned elderly man 
 coming up with unsteady steps — ^the harbour-master. A sudden 
 thought came to him. Why not by a fishing-boat? 
 
 He remembered his night with the herrings on the Governor's 
 yacht, when, lying oiF the Carlingford sands, he had seen the 
 lights of Dublin. Why could not a fishing-boat steal away in the 
 darkness and put Bessie ashore in Ireland? 
 
" AUD GOD MADE MAN OF THB DUST " 833 
 
 It was the very thing ! Only it must not be a Castletown boat, 
 lest she should be missed when the fleet came back to port in 
 the morning. Why not a Ramsey boat, or, better stiU, a boat 
 from Peel? 
 
 After dinner that night he walked on the gravelled terrace in 
 front of the house. The moon was shining in a pale sky and the 
 bald crown of old Snaefell was visible through the motionless 
 trees. He drew up on the spot on which he had first parted from 
 Fenella, and a warm vision of the scene of so many years ago 
 returned to him. Then came the memory of their last parting 
 and of the scorching words with which she had driven him away 
 from her. 
 
 " But wait! Only wait! " he thought. 
 
 He was satisfied with himself. He was sure he was doing 
 right. He even believed God was using him as an instrument of 
 His divine justice, to correct the infamy of the world by a signal 
 action. It was one of those lulls betwen the wings of a, circling 
 storm which come to the soul of man as well as to nature. 
 
 He was almost happy. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Next morning, under pretext of the Deemster's fortnightly 
 Court at Douglas and of important business to do before it, 
 Stowell breakfasted by the light of a lamp and the crackling of a 
 fire, and set out in his car for Peel. 
 
 Soon after six he was descending into the little white fishing- 
 port that lies in the lap of its blue circle of sea, with the red ruins 
 of its Cathedral at its feet and the green arms of its hills behind it. 
 
 The little town was still half asleep. Middle-aged women 
 were gutting herrings from barrel to barrel, while blood dripped 
 from their broad thumbs; old men were baiting lines with shell- 
 fish; cadgers' cart were standing empty at the foot of the pier, 
 with their horses' heads in bags of oats and chopped hay; a 
 hundred fishing-boats by the quay, with their sails hanging slack 
 from their masts, were swaying to, the ebbing tide, and an Irish 
 tramp steamer, the Dan O'Connor, was lazily letting down the fires 
 under her black and red funnel. 
 
 But at the pier-^head, close under the blind eyes of the Cathe- 
 dral, there was a scene of real activity. It was the fish auction 
 for the night's catch. The auctioneer, an Irishman, was standing 
 on a barrel, with a circle of fish-cadgers around him, and an 
 empty space, like a cock-pit, in front, to which the long-booted 
 fishermen, one by one, with ponderous agility, were carrying 
 
334 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 specimen baskets of herrings and dropping them down on the 
 red flags with a thud. 
 
 " Now, gintlemen, here's your last chance of a herring this 
 week. We're a religious people in the Isle of Man and sorra a 
 wan more will ye get till Tuesday." 
 
 Stowell, who had drawn up his car, and was standing at the 
 back of tJie crowd, was startled. How had he come to forget that 
 Manx fishing boats did not go out on Saturday or Sunday ? Was 
 this going to defeat his plan ? 
 
 The fish auction went on. 
 
 " Now, min, what do you say to forty mease from the Mona? 
 Thirty-five shillin' ! Thank you, Mr. Flynn ! Any incrase on 
 thirty-five? " 
 
 " Thirty-six and a quid for yourself if you'll lave me to put a 
 sight up on the wife," said a voice from the back of the crowd. 
 
 During the laughter which the rude jest provoked, Stowell 
 looked at the speaker. He was the skipper of the Irish tramp 
 steamer — a grizzly old salt, spitting tobacco juice from behind 
 a discoloured hand, and having rascal written on every line of 
 his face. 
 
 Turning away, Stowell walked slowly to the further end of the 
 bay, and as slowly back again. A new scheme had occurred to 
 him — something better than a fishing-boat, far better. He was 
 now more sure than ever that the Almighty was using him for His 
 righteous ends since even his failures of memory were helping him. 
 
 By the time he returned the auction was over. The pier was 
 empty and nobody was in sight except the Irish Captain who was 
 standing on the deck of his ship by the side of the cabin compan- 
 ion. After looking to right and left, Stowell saluted him. 
 
 " Where are you going to when you leave Peel, Captain ? " 
 
 " To Castletown, Sir." 
 
 "And from there?" 
 
 " To wherever the dust " (the money) " looks brightest." 
 
 " May I come aboard. Captain ? I have something to say 
 to you." 
 
 "Shure!" 
 
 After another look to right and left, Stowell stepped on to 
 the steamer and followed the Captain to his cabin. 
 
 When he came on deck, half-an-hour later, his face was flushed. 
 
 " Then it's settled. Captain? " 
 
 " Take the world aisy — it's done. Sir." 
 
 " At what time will it be high water on Sunday night ? " 
 
 " Elivin o'clock. Sir." 
 
 " You'll sail immediately your passengers come aboard ? " 
 
"AND GOD MADE MAN OF THE DUST" 335 
 
 " The minit they put foot on deck, Sir." 
 
 " What about the harbour-master ? " 
 Him and me are same as brothers." 
 
 " And the turnkey.? " 
 
 " Willie Shimmin .? He's got a petticoat at the " Manx Arms.' " 
 
 " You have no doubt you can do it? " 
 
 " Divil a doubt in the world. Sir." 
 
 Stowell, back in his car, was driving to Douglas. The Judge 
 had bribed a blackguard, but he was still sure that he was doing 
 God's service. 
 
 Only one thing remained to do now, and through the long hours 
 of an uneasy night he had thought of it. It was not even enough 
 that Bessie Collister should escape from the island. If she were 
 not to be tracked and brought back it was essential that somebody 
 should go with her. Who should it be? There was only one 
 answer to this question — Alick Gell. 
 
 Would Alick go ? He must ! Betrayed and deceived as he had 
 been, if he did not see that he must forgive the woman who had 
 faced death for him, and save her from an unjust punishment, 
 Stowell would feel like taking him by the throat and choking him. 
 
 But would Gell forgive him also ? That was a different matter. 
 Memory flowed back, and he saw again the fierce yet broken 
 creatiu-e who had come stumbling into Ballamoar on the night 
 after the adjournment, crying in the torment of his betrayal, 
 " Damn him, whoever he is ! Damn him to the devil and hell ! " 
 
 " No matter ! I must face it out," thought Stowell. 
 
 He must unite those two injured ones. And perhaps some day, 
 when they were gone from the island, and safe in some foreign 
 country, the Almighty would accept his act as a kind of reparation 
 and cover up all his wretched wrongdoing in the merciful veil 
 which is God's memory. But meantime he must go about for a 
 few days longer, a few days after to-day, warily, secretly, unseen 
 and unsuspected by anybody. 
 
 Driving into Douglas, he came upon the Chief Constable, 
 Colonel Farrell (a cringer to all above him and a bully to all 
 beneath), who hailed him and said, 
 
 " Just the gentleman I wished to see. Sir. It's about Mr. Gell. 
 Ever since you sentenced that woman of his he has been threaten- 
 ing you, and we've had to keep a close watch on him. But he 
 seems to be going out of his mind, and I've been warning the 
 Speaker that we may have to put him away. The other night he 
 gave us the slip and we believe he went to Ballamoar." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
S36 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " We wish you to allow a plain-clothes man to go about wiA 
 you for the next few days." 
 
 Stowell was startled. 
 
 " No, certainly not. It is quite unnecessary," he said. 
 
 " Well, if you say so it's all right. Sir. Still, with a madman 
 about, who may make a murderous attack on you . . . . " 
 
 " Where is he now? " 
 
 " In his chambers." 
 
 " Good-morning, Colonel ! " said Stowell, and before the Chief 
 Constable had replied he was gone. 
 
 A few minutes later the policeman who, for the protection of 
 the Deemster, was on point duty outside Gell's rooms was aston- 
 ished to see the Deemster himself go up the carpetless staircase. 
 
 At a door on the second landing, with Gell's name on it in white 
 letters, he stopped and knocked. The door was not opened, but 
 he heard shuffling steps inside and knocked again. 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX 
 
 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 Alick Gell, also, had travelled far. 
 
 After his temporary detention at Castletown, he had returned 
 to Douglas in a frenzy. 
 
 For four days everything had fed his fury. Having no house- 
 keeper he took his meals in a neighbouring hotel which was fre- 
 quented by his younger fellow-advocates. Sitting alone in a cor- 
 ner he spoke to none of them, but they seemed to be always speak- 
 ing at him. In loud voices they praised Stowell — his eloquence, 
 his knowledge, above all his impartiality, his superiority to the 
 calls of friendship. 
 
 This was gall and wormwood to Gell. He wanted to come 
 face to face with Stowell that he might charge him with his treach- 
 ery. He knew the police were watching him, but one day he 
 eluded them and took the train to Ballamoar. 
 
 It was evening when he got there. The cowman, who lived 
 in the lodge, told him the master was out in his car and might not 
 return until late. To beguile the time of waiting Gell walked in 
 the lanes and woods about the house. These evoked both kind 
 and cruel memories, the worst of them being the memory of the 
 day when he stammered his excuses for loving Bessie Collister, 
 and Stowell had said, " Good-bye and God bless you, old fellow ! " 
 What a scoundrel! 
 
 The darkness gathered. There was the last bleating of the 
 
OVT OF THE DEPTHS 337 
 
 sheep, the last calling of the curlew (like the cry of a bird without 
 a mate), and then night fell, dark night, without a star, and still 
 Stowell did not come. 
 
 Where was he? Gell thought he knew. He was at Govern- 
 ment House with Fenella Stanley. They were reconciled, of 
 course; they were kissing and caressing, while Bessie .... but 
 no, he dare not think of that. 
 
 What stung him most was the thought of the money he had 
 taken from Stowell. It had been neither more nor less than the 
 price of Bessie's honour. He remembered the Peel fisherman who 
 had burnt his boat. How he wished he had the money now that 
 he might ram it down Stowell's throat! 
 
 There had been rain and the frogs were croaking, but other- 
 wise 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, unpre- 
 meditated, 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, fol- 
 lowed by a peremptory voice, saying, 
 
 " Alick, let me in!" 
 
 It was his father, and an inherited instinct of obedience com- 
 pelled 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. 
 22 
 
338 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 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 respon- 
 sible, 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, f ath«r, 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. 
 
 The Speaker fixed his red eyes on his son, and said, 
 
 " Alick, I must tell you something. I've heard on good author- 
 ity that they are going to hang that girl." 
 
 " They can't. Some of them would like to, but they can't." 
 
 " They can and they will, I teU you." 
 
 " Then I'U . . . . I'U murder . . . . " 
 
 " There you are ! That's what Farrell says. A little more and 
 you'll be capable of anything. Go away, my boy. Think of me. 
 It has taken me forty years to get to where I am. I was bom 
 neither an aristocrat nor a pauper, but I've got my hand on all of 
 them. That's just the kind of man both sorts would like to pull 
 down. If my son disgraced me I should have to give up every- 
 thing. Go, my son, go." 
 
 " I can't, father, I can't." 
 
 The old man passed his hand over his bald head and in a low 
 voice he said, 
 
 " Perhaps I've not been a good father exactly, but there's your 
 mother. Bad as it would be for me it would be worse for her. 
 She has only one son — one child you might say — and since that 
 affair at Castletown she has never been out of doors — ^just creep- 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 339 
 
 ing oyer the fire with her feet in the fender. If you ^n't want 
 to bring your mother to her grave 
 
 Gell felt as if his heart were breaking. 
 " But I can't, I can't! " 
 
 You mean you won't? ' 
 
 " Very well, I won't." 
 
 The old man's voice thickened — ^the storm was coming. 
 
 " And for the sake of this woman who killed her brat . . . . " 
 
 " Call her what you like. I'll stay here until she comes out 
 of prison, and then .... then I'U marry her." 
 
 " You fool ! You damned 'heartless fool ! God forgive me 
 for bringing such a fool into the world." 
 
 Struggling to his feet the old man made for the door. But 
 having reached it, and while tugging at the handle, he stopped 
 and said, 
 
 " Look here, I'll give you one more chance." 
 
 He took the stout envelope out of his breast pocket again and 
 flung it on to Alick's desk. 
 
 " There's the money and this is Monday. If you are not off 
 the island by this day week I'll not leave matters to Farrell — I'U 
 have you put into a madhouse myself to prevent you from plunging 
 us all into disgrace and ruin. Idiot ! Fool ! Madman ! " 
 
 He screamed like a sea-gull until his breath was gone, and 
 then, gesticulating wildly, went downstairs with heavy thudding 
 steps like a man walking on stilts. 
 
 A few minutes later Gell, going to the window w^ith wet eyes, 
 saw his father on the opposite side of the street, looking up at 
 the house as if half minded to return. His stick fell from his 
 nervous hand, and with difficulty he picked it up. It dropped 
 again, and a passer-by handed it back. Then he went off in the 
 direction of the railway station, dragging his feet after him. 
 
 II 
 
 Frightened by what his father had said about the intention of 
 the Chief Constable to have him arrested as insane, Gell stayed 
 indoors altogether. 
 
 This meant days without food. At first he drank a great deal 
 of water, being very thirsty. Then his thirst abated and his head 
 began to feel light. After a while he became dizzy, and even in 
 the darkness everything seemed to float about him. 
 
 On the morning after his father's visit he heard a woman's step 
 
340 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 on the stairs, followed by her knock at his door. He thought it 
 was his sister Isabella and that she had come, with her sharp 
 tongue, to remonstrate, so he made no answer. 
 
 On the day following he heard the same light step. Isabella 
 again I But no, she had always railed against Bessie, and he was 
 not going to give her another opportunity of doing so. 
 
 Meantime, without food or drink, he was travelling fast to- 
 wards the borderland of the desert realm of Insanity, with its 
 cruelly-beautiful mirages. 
 
 Lying on his sofa with eyes closed he was picturing to himself 
 the day of Bessie's release, when he would go to Castletown to 
 bring her away, and then the day after, when he would marry her, 
 and then the day after that when they would leave the island for 
 America — Bessie walking along the pier with head down, but him- 
 self with head up, as if saying, " There you are — I told you so ! " 
 
 The knock came again, and again he did not answer it. " No, 
 no. Mistress Isabella! You shan't speak ill to me of the woman 
 who cared so much for me that she went to prison for my sake." 
 
 He had still travelled farther by this time. He was out in the 
 middle-west, on one of the high plains of that free continent. He 
 was working at his profession. He was not a great lawyer, but 
 he could speak out of his heart, and when he defended injured 
 women juries heard him and judges listened. 
 
 He saw them coming to him from far and near — that long trail 
 of the broken followers after the merciless army of civilisation. 
 They were nearly always poor and could pay him nothing. But 
 what matter about that? At home, at night, wet or cold, there 
 was a bowl of soup, a cheerful fire and .... Bessie! 
 
 On the Saturday morning he awoke from a dizzy sleep, with 
 the sun shining into his room and the sea outside the breakwater 
 singing softly. He was in his shirt sleeves, for he had thrown 
 himself on the bed in his clothes; his boots were unbuttoned; hi» 
 fair hair was tangled; he had not shaved for many days. 
 
 Again he heard the light step on the stairs. But something 
 in the rustle of the dress seemed to say that after all it was not his 
 sister. He listened. There were two knocks, louder and more 
 insistent than before ; then the rattle of the brass lid of his letter- 
 box, and then something falling on the floor. 
 
 A letter! After the light footsteps had gone downstairs he 
 crept over the carpet on tiptoe, picked up the letter 'and looked 
 at it. There were two lines at the top, partly printed, and 
 partly written — 
 
 " Castle Rushen Prison — Number 7." 
 
OVT OF THE DEPTHS 341 
 
 • 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 rememtered 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 stand- 
 ing on the threshold. He fell back breathless. Stowell entered 
 the room and closed the door behind him. 
 
 Ill 
 
 "Alick!" 
 
 "Go away!" 
 
 " I have something to say to you." 
 
342 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " 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 
 StoweU 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 book- 
 case behind him, expecting StoweU 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 inco- 
 herently 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, 
 
 " Then it's true — I'm mad." 
 
 But after another moment he was up and hurrying into the 
 next room for a sponge and a basin of water. 
 
 " It's nothing ! Nothing at all," said Stowell. " See, it has 
 stopped already. And now sit down and listen." 
 
 A few minutes later they were sitting side by side on the sofa — 
 Gell sniffling, Stowell talking quietly. 
 
 "Alick!" 
 
 "Yes.?" 
 
 " Bessie is waiting for you. She thinks you are trying to 
 obtain her pardon." 
 
 " I know. She has written. But what can / do? Nothing!" 
 
 " If / can help her to escape from Castle Rushen will you take 
 her away from the island.? " 
 
 Gell's eyes glistened. " Only give me the chance," he said. 
 
 " She could never come back. Therefore you could never come 
 back either." 
 
 " What do I care? " 
 
 " You would have to give up everything — your inheritance, 
 your family, your .... ! " 
 
 " I .... I can't help that.'' 
 
 " You are sure you would never regret the sacrifice ? " 
 
 " Never ! Only show me the way . . . . " 
 
 " I will," said Stowell. 
 
 And then he explained his scheme and the motives which had 
 inspired it. He had been compelled to condemn the girl, accord- 
 
OVT OF TEE DEPTHS 343 
 
 ing to law, but he had come to see that the old Statute was a 
 crime, and that it was his duty to break it. 
 
 " Do you say that, Victor — you? " 
 
 " Listen." 
 
 An Irish tramp steamer would be lying in Castletown Harbour 
 on Sunday night. She would berth in front of the Castle, not 
 more than fifteen yards from the gates. At eleven o'clock Stowell 
 would open the Deemster's private door and bring Bessie out. 
 Gell must be there to take her aboard. The tide being up, the 
 vessel would sail immediately. She would sail north, past the 
 Point of Ayre, to give the appearance of going to Scotland; but in 
 the morning, when out of sight from the land, she would steer 
 south and land her passengers at Queenstown. Atlantic liners 
 called there twice a week and Gell and Bessie must take passages 
 to New York. On reaching New York they must travel west — 
 far west .... 
 
 " But can it be done? Can you get Bessie out of the Castle? " 
 
 " I've counted every chance," said Stowell. " Whatever hap- 
 pens, I must not fail." 
 
 " What a good fellow . . . . " began GeU, but Stowell 
 dropped his head and hurried on with his story. 
 
 " I've given the Irish Captain a hundred pounds, and you are 
 to give him another hundred when he puts you ashore at Queens- 
 town. I'll find you the money." 
 
 " No, no! I've enough of my own — see," said Gell, and he 
 showed the bundle of banknotes given to him by his father. 
 
 " Your father gave you that? " 
 
 " Yes, to pay my way to America." 
 
 Stowell's face glowed with a kind of superstitious rapture. 
 More than ever now he was certain he was doing right, that the 
 Divine powers were directing him. But aU the same he kept up 
 the cunning of the criminal. 
 
 " I must see you again to-morrow night in some secret place. 
 Where shall it be? " 
 
 " Why not the Miss Browns' at Derby Haven? They'll hold 
 their tongues. They owe me something." 
 
 " Very well, eight o'clock, Sunday night," said Stowell, and 
 he rose to go. 
 
 " What a good fellow ....'' began Gell again, but Stowell 
 looked at him and he stopped. 
 
 The Deemster's Court had to wait for the Deemster. When 
 be arrived with a patch of plaster on his cheek-bone, he told 
 Joshua Scarff that he had accidentally knocked his face against 
 
344 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 a gas-bracket and had had to go to a chemist to get the 
 wound dressed. 
 
 It was an intricate case he tried that day, but the advocates 
 engaged in it said he had never before been so cool, so clear, 
 so collected. 
 
 " After all, the Governor knew what he was doing," they 
 told themselves. 
 
 That night, Saturday night, after a furtive visit to the tavern 
 on the quay, Gell slipped through the back streets to the railway 
 station and leapt into the last train for the north as the carriages 
 were leaving the platform. 
 
 He was going home to say good-bye to his mother — ^not with 
 his tongue, for he had no hope of speaking to her, but with his 
 eyes and his heart. If he could only see her for a moment before 
 leaving the island ! 
 
 It was late when he reached the lane to his father's house, and 
 the night was dark, for it was the time between the going and 
 the coming of two moons. 
 
 At length the blacker darkness of the house stood out against 
 the gloomy sky. There was no light in any of the windows — the 
 family had gone to bed. But Alick had been born there, and he 
 thought he could find his way blindfold. 
 
 For some time he walked stealthily about, trying to discover 
 the dining-room window, for he; remembered what his father had 
 said about his mother sitting With her feet in the fender. He 
 found it at last, but, peering behind the edge of the blind, he saw 
 nothing except the dull slack of the fire dropping to ashes in 
 the grate. 
 
 Groping about in the darkness on the gravel his footsteps had 
 made a noise and presently a dog inside began to bark. It was his 
 own dog, Mona, and he remembered that when he was a boy he 
 had bought her as a pup for five shillings from a farmer and 
 brought her home in his arms, licking his hand. 
 
 The dog's clamour awakened the household, and presently, 
 through the long staircase window, he saw his sisters on the 
 landing, in their nightdresses and curl-papers, carrying candles 
 and looking frightened. 
 
 Then the sash of a window went up with a bang and his 
 father's voice came in a husky roar through the night, 
 
 " Who's that.? " 
 
 With a chill down his back, Alick turned about and hurried 
 away, feeling that he was being driven from the home of his 
 boyhood as if he were a thief. 
 
THE ESCAPE S46 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN 
 
 THE ESCAPE 
 
 Next day was Sunday. It was a blind day at Ballamoar, 
 with a chill air and white mists sweeping up from the sea. 
 
 In the morning Stowell went to church. In the afternoon he 
 sat in the Library, reading in many volumes the stories of prison- 
 breakings and escapes. He saw that in nearly every case of 
 failure chance had played a part at the last moment, and he 
 thought hard to foresee every possible contingency. 
 
 Towards evening he brought his car round from the garage and 
 told Janet not to wait up for him. She had delivered Fenella's 
 message (" Tell him to come back to me ") and thought she knew 
 where he was going to. He was going to Government House. 
 The sweet old soul was very happy. 
 
 " I'll leave the piazza door on the catch, dear," she said, as 
 he was going off into the moving shadows of the trees. 
 
 By the time he reached Castletown the mist had deepened to a 
 fog. The broad tower of the Castle looked monstrously large and 
 forbidding against the gloom of the sky, and the fog-horn of the 
 light-house on Langness was blowing with a measured and melan- 
 choly sound across the unseen sea. 
 
 Coming upon a tholthan (a ruiiied cottage) by the roadside he 
 ran his car into it, and then walked into the town. 
 
 The little place was once the capital of the island, and still 
 retained many of its primitive characteristics. There were no 
 lamps in the streets, which were therefore quite dark. Only a 
 few of the houses gave out light, for the younger children were 
 already in bed, and their parents were trooping to church or chapel. 
 
 The church bells were ringing. Save for that, and the foot- 
 steps of his fellow pedestrians who walked in the darkness beside 
 him, Stowell heard nothing but the blowing of the far-off fog-horn. 
 Everything favoured his design. " It was meant to be," he 
 told himself. 
 
 Nevertheless he was conscious of making his steps light and 
 of trying to escape observation. He took the least frequented 
 thoroughfares, so that he might walk fast and not be recognised, 
 but in a narrow lane that ran along under the Castle he came 
 upon a pitiful spectacle and was compelled to stop. 
 
 An elderly woman, wearing little except her nightdress, with 
 her feet bare and her long grey hair hanging loose, was kneeling 
 •n the paved way'^nd praying. 
 
346 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Oh Lord, as Thou didst send Thine angel to take Peter out 
 of prison, send him now to take my poor girl out of the Castle.' 
 
 By a dull light from a curtained window, Stowell saw who the 
 poor demented creature was. It was Mrs. Collister. Little as he 
 desired it, he had to pick her up and take her home. 
 
 " Come, mother," he said, raising her to her feet. 
 
 She looked into his face with awe, and permitted herself to be 
 led away by the hand like a child. A group of boys and girls who 
 had gathered round told him where she lived and that she was the 
 mother of the woman who was to be " hangt " in the morning. 
 
 Just then the people, a man and his wife, with whom she 
 lodged, came hurrying up, saying they had left her in bed while 
 they went into their yard on some errand and on returning to the 
 kitchen they had missed her. 
 
 In a few moments they were all at the open door of the house, 
 a tiny place two steps down from the street, with a lamp burning 
 on the table. 
 
 Finding the light on his face Stowell said Good-evening and 
 hurried away, but not before the man and his wife had seen him. 
 
 " That must be the young Dempster," said the man. 
 
 " It was his father," said Mrs. Collister. 
 
 " But his father is dead, woman," said the wife. 
 
 " It was his father, I tell thee," said Mrs. Collister, and they 
 let her have her way. 
 
 Still the church-bells rang, the fog-^hom blew and Stowell 
 stepped lightly through the dark streets of the little town. He 
 passed the new Methodist chapel with the dark figure of the pew- 
 opener against the coloured glass screen of the vestibule; the 
 barracks, with the sentinel pacing outside and a number of red- 
 coated soldiers in a bare room within, smoking and playing cards. 
 The market-square was ablaze with light from the windows of the 
 church (the same at which Bessie had kept Oie'l Verree) and the 
 shadowy forms of the congregation were passing in at the porch. 
 
 At length he reached the quay with its smell of rock-salt and 
 tar. The Dan O'Connell was lying under the Castle gates, lazily 
 getting up steam, and the Captain was smoking by the gangway. 
 
 " Everything right. Captain? " 
 
 " Everything, Sir." 
 
 " Will the fog interfere? " 
 
 " Not a ha'porth, yer Honour." 
 
 "What about the Harbour-master?" 
 
 " In church with the wife, but I'm to have supper with him 
 after the sarvice and take a bottle of something." 
 
 "And the Turnkey? " 
 
TEE ESCAPE 347 
 
 " Blind polatic at the ' Manx Arms,' Sir." 
 
 There came a dull hammering from the inside the Castle. 
 Stawell shivered. 
 
 " Will tliey be gone in time? " 
 
 " Going back by the last train they're teUing me." 
 
 " You'll whistle when you're clear away ? " 
 
 " Shure ! " 
 
 As Stowell crossed the foot-bridge at the back of the Church, 
 he heard the congregation singing the opening hymn (" Nearer, 
 my God, to Thee ") and thought he knew the subject of the 
 forthcoming sermon. The melancholy blowing of the fog-horn 
 was coming through the blindness of the sea; the revolving light 
 was blinking in and out on Langness. 
 
 A quarter of an hour later he was at Derby Haven. Most of 
 the houses of the little port were dark, but the window of one of 
 them gave out a faint light. Stowell tapped at it and Gell opened 
 the door. 
 
 For two hours they sat together in the old maids' stuiFy sitting- 
 room, talking in whispers. Stowell gave Gell his last instructions. 
 
 " You remember that there are two gates to the Castle? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Alt eleven o'clock exactly, the moment the clock has ceased 
 striking, you'll ring at the big gate, and then step round to 
 the Deemster's." 
 
 " Yes ! " 
 
 " Somebody will open the gate. It will be the jailer. If he 
 calls you'll make no answer." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " As soon as he has closed the big gate the little one will be 
 opened and Bessie will be brought out to you." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " That's all. You know the rest." 
 
 After that there was a cold silence, quite unlike the warmth of 
 yesterday. Each was thinking of the cruel thing which had come 
 between them, and neither dared to talk about. At length Gell, 
 taking something from his pocket, said, 
 
 " I owe you some money." 
 
 " No, you don't. Remember the terms I lent it on." 
 
 " Then take this anyway," said Gell, handing Stowell a 
 sealed envelope. 
 
 After that there was another long silence, and then Gell said, 
 in a thick voice, 
 
 " When we're far enough away I'll write." 
 
S48 THB ilABTEB OF MAN 
 
 "No, no!" 
 
 " Do you mean that I'm never to write to you? " 
 
 " Never." 
 
 " But I will .... I must . . . . " 
 
 " Don't be a damned fool, man. Can't you see you never can ? " 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " Victor," said Gell, " that's the first unkind word you hare 
 ever said to me." 
 
 " Alick," said Stowell, " it shall be the last." 
 
 The wash of the tide (it was near to the flood) on the stones of 
 the shore, the monotonous blowing of the fog-horn and the deliber- 
 ate ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece were the only sounds 
 they heard except the irregular heave of their own breathing. 
 
 The two men were alternately watching the fingers of the clock 
 and gazing down at the pattern of the carpet. At a few minutes t» 
 ten Stowell got up and said, 
 
 " I must go now." 
 
 " I'll walk down the road with you," said Gell. 
 
 They walked side by side in the mist until they came to the 
 ruins of Hango Hill (where long before Alick had had his fight 
 with the townsmen) and were breast to breast with King 
 William's College. 
 
 " You had better go back now. We must not be seen to- 
 gether," said Stowell. 
 
 They stood for some moments without speaking. The clock 
 in the school tower was striking ten. The school itself was in 
 darkness. Another generation of boys were lying asleep in it now. 
 
 " I suppose we've got to say good-bye," said Gell. 
 
 Stowell made no reply, but he took Gell's hand and there was a 
 long handclasp. Then they separated, Stowell going on towards 
 the town, and Gell turning back to Derby Haven. Each had 
 walked a few paces when Gell stopped and called, 
 
 "Vic!" 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 There was a pause, and then, in a thick voice, 
 
 "Nothing! S'long!" 
 
 And so they parted. 
 
 There was loud laughter and a voice with a brogue from a 
 house on the quay with the blind down but the top sash of the 
 window partly open. The church was dark and the market-place 
 silent, save for the measured tread of the sentry. 
 
 But as Stowell crossed the square he heard a light step and 
 saw through the thick air the shadowy form of a woman coming 
 
THE ESCAPE 349 
 
 from the direction of the Castle and going towards the 
 hotel opposite. 
 
 He hung back until she had passed, and when the door of the 
 hotel opened to her knocking, and the light from within rushed 
 out on her, he saw who it was. 
 
 It was Fenella. Stowell understood. She had come from the 
 cell of the condemned woman, and was sleeping in Castletown that 
 night in order to be with her in the morning. 
 
 " But wait! Only wait! " 
 
 In spite of his certainty that Providence was on his side he 
 stepped more lightly than ever as he went down to the quay. 
 
 The funnel of the Irish steamer was now throbbing hard, and 
 a few sailors on the forward deck were swearing. Save for this 
 and the wash of the tide against the sides of the harbour, all 
 was still. 
 
 Stowell looked around and listened for a moment. Then he 
 stepped up to the Deemster's door and pulled the bell, and heard 
 its clang inside the waUa. 
 
 II 
 
 "Ah, is it you, Dempster.^ You've come for Miss Stanley.'' 
 She's just gone. Sir." 
 
 " I know. I saw her. Are you alone, Mr. Vondy? " 
 
 " Alone enough, Sir. It's shocking ! The night before an 
 execution too! That Willie Shimmin, the drunken gommeral, 
 went off at four and isn't back yet. I wouldn't trust but I'll be 
 here by myself until the High Bailiff and the Inspector and long 
 Duggie Taggart come at six in the morning." 
 
 " How is your prisoner to-night, Mr. Vondy? " 
 
 " Wonderful quiet. Sir." 
 
 " Still expecting her pardon ? " 
 
 " 'Deed she is, poor bogh, and listening for Mr. Gell's feet to 
 fetch it. Now she thinks he'll come in the morning. ' Something 
 tells me he'll come at daybreak,' she said, and that's the for she's 
 gone to sleep." 
 
 They had reached the guard-room, where a fire was burning, 
 and an old oak armchair (once the seat of the Kings of Man) 
 was drawn up in front of the hearth. 
 
 " Gone to sleep, has she ? I must see her though. I have 
 something to tell her." 
 
 " Is it the pardon itself. Sir? Has it come then? " 
 
 "Not yet, but a telegram may come from London at any 
 moment." 
 
 "You don't say?" 
 
350 THE MA8TEB OF MAN 
 
 " Give me your key, and sit here and make your supper " 
 (a kettle was singing on the hob), " and if you hear the bell you 
 will go off to the gate immediately." 
 
 " I wiU that. Sir." 
 
 At the end of a long corridor Stowell stopped at a cell that 
 had a label on the door-post (" Elizabeth Corteeiu Murder. 
 Death ") and looked in through the grill. In the dim light he saw 
 thj prisoner lying on her plank bed under her brown prison 
 blanket. With a tremor of the heart he opened the door quietly 
 and closed it behind him. 
 
 "Bessie!" 
 
 It had been hardly more than a whisper, but through the mists 
 of sleep Bessie heard it. There was a cry, a bound, and then a 
 rapturous voice saying in the half darkness, 
 
 " Ah, you are here already! I knew you would come." 
 
 But at the next moment, seeing who her visitor was, she stared 
 at him with wide-open eyes, and then fell on him with reproaches. 
 
 " So it's you, is it? What have you come for? Is it only to 
 tell me that I'm to die in the morning? " 
 
 StoweU stood with head down, feeling like a prisoner before 
 his Judge. Then he said, 
 
 " You are not to die, Bessie." 
 
 She caught her breath and put up her hands to her breast. 
 
 " Do you mean that I am . . . . " 
 
 " You are pardoned and have to leave this place immediately." 
 
 For a perceptible time Bessie stood silent, save for her breath- 
 ing, which was loud and rapid. 
 
 " Is it true? Really true? " 
 
 " Quite true." 
 
 There is something childlike in sudden joy; Paradise itself 
 must be a place of children. Bessie dropped back on her bed, 
 clasped her hands together like a child, and said, 
 
 " I see it all now, and it has been just as I thought at first. 
 You wrote a letter to the King and he has pardoned me. The 
 law is hard but the King is so tender-hearted. ' Poor girl,' 
 he thought, ' she didn't mean to kill her baby — ^not after it 
 came, anyway.' " 
 
 Her eyes, which had been glistening, suddenly became grave, 
 and lifting them to the ceiling, with her hands clasped before her 
 face, she began to pray. 
 
 " Oh God, I've not been a good girl and I don't know how to 
 pray right, but . . . . " and then came a flood of words too sacred 
 to be set down. 
 
 When she had finished her prayer she said. 
 
TBE ESCAPE 351 
 
 " But you have been good too, and I have been insulting you ! 
 That's the way with a girl when she has been in trouble. You'll 
 forgive me, won't you? " 
 
 Her face lit up and she went on talking, more to herself than 
 to Stowell. ^ 
 
 " Did you say. I was to leave this place immediately? That 
 means first thing 1x)-morrow, doesn't it? I'll go to mother. She's 
 staying with some Methodist people in Quay Lane. Poor mother, 
 she won't be able to believe it. We'll go home by the first train." 
 
 Thinking of home she found a kind of proud revenge in 
 triumphing over her enemies. 
 
 " Dan Baldromma will have to hold his tongue now. And 
 those Skillicomes will never be allowed to show their ugly old 
 faces again. And Cain the constable will have to find another 
 beat, too, ajid those impudent girls who stared at me at Douglas 
 station — they'll never have the face to sit in the singing- 
 seat again." 
 
 But the smiling background of her thoughts was love. 
 
 " Alick wiU hear of it, won't he? I wrote to him but he didn't 
 answer. Perhaps his sisters prevented him — they've always been 
 casting me up to ihim. Poor Alick! He'll forgive me — I know 
 he will. It was for Alick I did it. And just think! Next Sun- 
 day, perhaps, when people are walking about, we'll go downs 
 Parliament Street together ! And me on Alick's arm, and nobody 
 to say a word against it, now that the King has forgiven me ! " 
 
 Stowel hardly dared to look at the girl. For a long time he 
 could not speak. But at length he compelled himself to tell her 
 that she was not to go home. It was a condition of her pardon 
 that she should leave the island. 
 
 "■ Leave tiie island? " 
 
 " Yes, there's a steamer in the harbour, and you are to sail 
 by it to-night." 
 
 " To-night? " 
 
 " Yes, to Ireland, land from there, by another steamer, to 
 New York." 
 
 "To New York?" 
 
 " Yes, but Alick is to go with you. I've just left him. We 
 have arranged everything. 
 
 She looked searchingly into his agitated face and the radiance 
 died off her own. 
 
 " But are you telling me the truth? " she said. " Am I really 
 pardoned? You are not helping me to escape, are you? " 
 
 He pretended to laugh — It was hollow laughter. 
 
S62 THE MASTER OF MAS 
 
 " What an idea ! A Deemster helping a prisoner to escape ! 
 Who would believe such a thing? " 
 
 " No! People -wouldn't believe such a thing, would they? " 
 she said, and her eyes again began to shine. 
 
 " At eleven o'clock the big beU -will ring/' said StoweU. " That 
 will be Alick coming for you. You must give me your hand and 
 I'll take you down to him." 
 
 " Oh, how happy we shall be ! " she said. " We shall go far 
 away, I suppose — where nobody will know what has hap- 
 pened here? " 
 
 " Yes, but you must make no noise on going out, and not call 
 to anybody." 
 
 " But Mr. Vondy — ^he has been so good — I may stop and 
 thank him? " 
 
 " He wont be there. I'll give him your message." 
 
 " But mother — if I'm going so far away I must say good-bye 
 to her." 
 
 " No, I'm sorry the steamer will sail immediately." 
 
 She looked <again into his agitated face and then, raising her 
 Toice, she said, 
 
 " Mr. Stowell, you are deceiving me. I have not been par- 
 doned. You are helping me to escape." 
 
 "Hush!" 
 
 But (again in a loud voice) she cried, 
 
 " Don't lie to me any longer. Tell me the truth." 
 
 He hesitated for a moment, and then he ix)ld her. Yes, he 
 fvas helping her to escape. He had tried to procure her pardon 
 and failed, so he had determined to set her free. 
 
 While she listened to his tremulous voice she became a prey 
 to a strange confusion. For days she had felt as if she hated this 
 man, and now a mysterious feeling of warmth from the past came 
 over her. 
 
 " But what about you? " she asked. 
 
 " I can take care of myself," he answered. 
 
 " But if anything becomes known after Alick and I have 
 gone . . . . " 
 
 " Nothing will become known." 
 
 " But if anything does, and you get into trouble . . . . " 
 
 " Bessie," said Stowell (he was breathing hard), " I did you a 
 great wrong a year ago . . . . " 
 
 " No, that was as much my fault as yours. I have been pray- 
 ing and praying for pardon, but rather than run aiway now and 
 leave you to ... . No, I won't go ! " 
 
THB ESCAPE 353 
 
 There was a moment of uneasy silence and then Stowell said, 
 
 " Alick is waiting outside for you, Bessie. He is ready to give 
 np everything in the world for your sake. Are you going to 
 break his heart at the last moment.'' " 
 
 " But I can't ! I can't ! I . . . . I won't ! And you shan't 
 either. Mr. Vondy ! Mr. Von — . . . . " 
 
 "Be quiet! Be quiet!" 
 
 She had tried to reach the door, but he had thrown his arms 
 about her and was covering her mouth to smother her cries. Ceas- 
 ing to shout she began to moan, and then he tried to coax her. 
 
 " Come, girl! Trust me! I know what I'm doing. Pull 
 yourself together. Stand up ! It's nearly eleven o'clock. You'U 
 have to walk to the gate presently. Come now, be brave." 
 
 But her eyes had closed, and by the dim light from the grill 
 he saw that she was insensible. 
 
 " Bessie! Bessie! " he whispered, but she was lying helpless 
 in his arms. 
 
 For a moment he was bewildered. Of all the chances that 
 might prevent success this was the only one he had not counted 
 with. But at the next instant his mind, which was working with 
 lightning-like rapidity, saw a new opportunity. 
 
 " Better so," he thought, and laying the unconscious woman on 
 her bed he hurried back to the jailer. 
 
 II 
 
 " Mr. Vondy ! Mr. Vondy ! Your prisoner is ill." 
 
 The jailer, who had fallen asleep after his supper, staggered 
 to his feet. 
 
 " God bless my soul! And the doctor living at the other end 
 of the town too." 
 
 " Never mind the doctor ! Brandy ! Quick ! " 
 
 " There isn't a drop in the Castle, Sir." 
 
 " Yes, there's a flask in my room. Take these " (giving him 
 a bunch of keys) " and go for it." 
 
 " Where wiU I find it. Sir? " 
 
 " I don't know. I can't remember. Look everywhere — in every 
 drawer, every cupboard." 
 
 " I will, your Honour." 
 
 " Don't come back without it." 
 
 " I won't. Sir." And still in the mists of sleep the jailer picked 
 up his lantern from the table sind staggered off. 
 
 Stowell listened to the sounds of the old man's retreating foot- 
 steps until they had died away. 
 23 
 
354 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " This will give more time,'' he thought — he had sent the 
 jailer on a fruitless errand. 
 
 It was then five minutes to eleven. Returning to the cell he 
 lifted Bessie in his arms and carried her out of the prison. At 
 first he was no more conscious of her weight than he had been of 
 the weight of the sheep on the mountains. 
 
 But outside it was very dark, and at every uncertain step his 
 burden became heavier. In the open space between the main 
 building and the outer walls the fog lay thick as in a well, and it 
 was as much as he could do to see one foot before him. 
 
 Over the wooden drawbridge his feet fell with a thudding 
 sound, but he groped for the grass at the bottom of the stone steps, 
 so that he should not be heard on the gravel path. 
 
 There was no sound in the court-yard except that of the fierce 
 belching from the funnel of the steamer, the wash of the tide in 
 the harbour, the boom of the sea in the bay and the monotonous 
 blowing of the fog-horn. 
 
 He was making for the Deemster's private entrance and had 
 no light to guide him except the borrowed gleam from the door to 
 the Deemster's rooms, which the j ailer in his haste had left open. 
 As he passed this door he heard the sound of the rapid opening 
 and closing of drawers. The weight of the woman in his arms 
 was becoming unbearable. 
 
 At one moment he saw the shadowy outlines of a white thing 
 which the carpenters had erected against the walls. He juddered 
 and went on. 
 
 The damp air was chill and Bessie began to revive under it. 
 At first she breathed heavily, and then she made those low, inar- 
 ticulate moans of returning consciousness which are the most 
 unearthly sounds that come from human lips. 
 
 " Mr. Von— .... Mr. Von— . . . . " 
 
 Both arms being engaged, Stowell had to crush the girl's 
 mouth against his breast to stop her cries. They ceased and she 
 swooned again. 
 
 His burden was becoming monstrous. With a savage strength 
 of will and muscle he struggled along. At length he reached the 
 Deemster's door. It was fastened as he knew, not only by the 
 lock of which the key was in his waistcoat pocket, but also by three 
 long bolts. With the unconcious girl in his arms it was as much 
 as he could do to open it. At last he did so. A pale face was 
 outside. It was Gell's. 
 
 " Take her — she has fainted." Not another word was spoken. 
 
 Gell, breathing rapidly, took Bessie into his arms, and carried 
 
TEE ESCAPE 355 
 
 her across the quay. Stowell watched him until he reached the 
 gangway, and then the sea mist hid him. He heard Gell walking 
 on the deck and then going, with heavy footsteps, down the 
 cahin companion. 
 
 He closed the Deemster's door, locked and bolted it, and then 
 turned back to the prison. Again he kept to the grass and was 
 conscious of an effort to make his footsteps light. 
 
 On reaching the drawbridge he looked back and listened. The 
 opening and closing of drawers was still audible. The funnel of 
 the steamer was still belching invisible smoke, and red sparks from 
 the fires below were shooting through it. The tide was still wash- 
 ing in the harbour, the sea was still booming in the bay, and the fog- 
 horn was still blowing on Langness. Save for these sights and 
 s»unds, everything was dark and silent within the great blind walls. 
 
 Then the clock in the tower struck eleven. Every stroke fell 
 OB the clammy air like a blow from a padded hamme* 
 
 III 
 
 Five minutes passed. 
 
 Stowell had returned to the cell, stretched out the brown prison 
 blankets so as to give the appearance, in the dim light, of a body 
 on the bed, and was now sitting in the armchair before the fire in 
 the guard-room. His work was not yet done, and he was listen- 
 ing to the sounds outside. Until the steamer sailed he must 
 remain in the Castle to keep watch on the jailer. He was more 
 sure than ever that he was doing God's work, but he was still 
 behaving like a criminal. 
 
 Footsteps approached. The jailer entered, mopping his 
 forehead. 
 
 " I can't find it, your Honour, and I've searched everywhere." 
 
 " Never mind, Mr. Vondy. Your prisoner recovered from her 
 attack and is now sleeping peacefully." 
 
 "Sleeping, is she.? I'll take a look at her." 
 
 " Don't ! I mean don't go into the cell and disturb her." 
 
 " I won't. Sir," said the jailer, from half-way down the 
 corridor. 
 
 Stowell listened intently. Presently the jailer returned. 
 
 " Aw, yes, she's fast enough ! Wonderful the way they sleep 
 on the last night. Something you told her, perhaps. Has the 
 telegram come, your Honour? " 
 
 " No, and it won't come now. Eleven o'clock, they said. If 
 it didn't come then I was not to expect it." 
 
358 THE MASTER OP UAlf 
 
 " Poor bogh! It will be a shocking thing ■when Duggie 
 Taggart comes in the morning. I wouldn't trust but it will be a 
 dead woman itself we'll be taking out of the cell. Sir." 
 
 " I wouldn't trust," said Stowell. 
 
 Insensibly he had dropped into the Anglo-Manx. He was try- 
 ing to find some excuse for remaining. 
 
 " It'll be a middlin' cold drive home, old friend — couldn't you 
 make me a cup of coffee ? " 
 
 " With pleasure, Sir," said the jailer. And while the old man 
 stirred the peats end hung the kettle on the slowrie, Stowell, 
 listening at the same time to the voices without (the husky brogue 
 of the Irish Captain and the guttural croaking of the half -tipsy 
 harbour-master) got him to tell the story of his appointment. 
 
 " It was tliirty years ago, when I was coachman at Ballamoar 
 in the ' Stranger's ' days — a wonderful kind woman your mother 
 was. Sir." 
 
 " Hurry up, boys. Bear a hand with that crank " — the swing- 
 bridge was being opened; the steamer was to go out in spite 
 of the fog. 
 
 " I used to be taking her for drives in the morning, and it was 
 always ' Thank you, Mr. Vondy ! A beautiful drive, Mr. Vondy ! ' 
 Aw, gentry. Sir, gentry born ! " 
 
 " Damn your eyes, let go that forrard rope " — the Captain 
 was on the bridge. 
 
 " We had a young Irish mare in them days. Sir, and coming 
 home one morning in harvest, not more than a month before your 
 Honour was born, Illiam Christian (he was always a toot was 
 lUiam) started his new reaper in the road field just as we were 
 passing the Nappin, and the mare bolted." 
 
 " Why the divil don't you take in the slack of that starn rope ? 
 Do you want me to come down and dump you overboard? " — ^the 
 funnels had ceased to roar and the paddles were plashing. 
 
 " I was a middling strong young fellow then, Mr. Stowell, Sir, 
 and if the mare pulled I pulled too, until one of the reins broke 
 at me and I was flung off the box." 
 
 " Aisy does it ! Take in that breast rope, bys " — the steamer 
 was passing through the gate. 
 
 " I wasn't for letting go for all. Not me ! Just holding on 
 like mad, though it was tossing and tumbling on the road I wa« 
 like a moUag in a dirty sea." 
 
 " Half -steam below there " — the steamer was opening the bay. 
 
 " I bet her at last. Sir, and up she came at the Ballamoar gates 
 blowing like a smithy bellows and sweating tremenjous, but quiet 
 as a lamb." 
 
THE ESCAPE 357 
 
 " Heave oh and away ! " 
 
 " I was ragged and torn like a scarecrow, and herself was as 
 white as a sea-gull, but never a scratch, thank God ! " 
 
 "Bravo!" 
 
 " The Dempster had heard the yelling on the road and down 
 the drive he came in his dressing-gown and slippers, trembling like 
 a ghost. And when he saw it was all right with herself, ' Mr. 
 Vondy,' says he, with the water in his eyes, ' I'll never forget it, 
 Mr. Voiidy,' he says." 
 
 " And he didn't.? " 
 
 " 'Deed no ! Aw, a grand man, the ould Dempster, Sir. 
 Middlin' stiff in the upper lip, but a man of his word for all. 
 And when Capt'n Crow pegged out and this place was vacant he 
 put me in for it." 
 
 Straining his powers of listening Stowell was still waiting for 
 the whistle that was to tell him the steamer was clear away. 
 
 " Crow? That was Nelson's Crow, wasn't it.-" " 
 
 " Nelson's Crow it was. Sir. One-eyed Crow we were calling 
 him. He was boatswain on the Victory, and when the big man 
 went down he was in the cockpit holding him in his arms. ' Will 
 I die, Mr. Crow.? ' said Nelson. ' We had better wait for the 
 opinion of the ship's doctor. Sir,' said Crow." 
 
 There was a long shrill whistle from a distance. Stowell leapt 
 to his feet and laughed — ^the steamer had gone. 
 
 " Ah, a rael Manxman, wasn't he? Wouldn't commit himself, 
 you see." 
 
 Then he slapped the jailer on the shoulder and said, 
 
 " So you've been here thirty years, old friend ? " 
 
 "About that. Sir," said the jailer. 
 
 " But do you know you wouldn't be here thirty hours longer if 
 I were to tell the Governor what you've done to-night? " 
 
 " Why^ what's that, your Honour ? " 
 
 " Left a condemned prisoner without guard, or even without 
 remembering to lock her up and carry away the keys " — and he 
 threw the keys of the cell on the table. 
 
 " God bless me, yes ! I never thought of that. But it was 
 yourself that sent me out, and your Honour will not tell." 
 
 " Not I, old friend. But listen ! Nobody in the island knows 
 that I've been trying to get your prisoner's pardon, and now that 
 it hasn't come, it's better that nobody should know. So you'll 
 say nothing to a,nybody about my being here to-night? " 
 
 " Not a word. Sir. But you've done your best for the poor 
 bogh, and it's Himself will reward you." 
 
358 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 It was not until Stowell was outside the Castle that he reflected 
 that whatever else happened in the morning the jailer must cer- 
 tainly fall into disgrace. 
 
 " I must find a way to make it up to him," he thought. 
 
 IV 
 
 The quay was deserted and the berth of the tramp steamer in 
 the harbour was an empty space, but in the fever of his impatience 
 Stowell walked to the end of the pier to make sure that the 
 ship had gone. 
 
 The fog had lifted a little by this time, the fog-horn was no 
 longer blowing, and against the dark sea he could just make out 
 the darker hull of the steamer leaving the bay. Farther away he 
 saw the revolving light from Langness, which was shooting red 
 vapour into the sky like breath from fiery nostrils. The night 
 air was still cold, but his forehead was perspiring. 
 
 Bessie would be recovering consciousness by this time. " Where 
 am I ? " she would be saying. And then she would hear the throb 
 of the engines and the wash of the water, and see Alick by her side. 
 
 For a moment he lost sight of the ship's stern light (a mist was 
 sweeping over the surface of the sea) and his anxiety became 
 agony, but it reappeared at the other side of the light-house and 
 his spirits rose again. Yes, she was steering north. 
 
 " Sail on ! Sail on ! Sail on ! " 
 
 He returned to the town. In the thinning fog everything 
 looked immensely large and frightening. He walked slowly in 
 order not to attract attention. Passing through the narrow streets 
 he found nearly all the houses dark. Only two or three of the 
 upper windows showed light, and from one of them, partly open, 
 he heard the cry of a sick child. 
 
 But in a winding lane, close under the Castle, he came upon a 
 cottage that was lit up in the lower storey, and loud with many 
 voices. He recognised it as the house at which he had left Mrs. 
 CoUister, and understood what was happening. The old woman's 
 Primitive friends were holding a prayer-meeting by her bedside in 
 the kitchen to comfort her. A man was praying and many 
 women were shouting responses. 
 
 "Save the sinner, O Lord!" (Hallelujahl) "She may be 
 inside prison walls to-night, but show her the Golden Gates are 
 always open." ( Hallelujah!) " Remember Thy servant, her 
 mother!" (Am yes, remember her!) "Her soul is passing 
 through deep waters." ('Deed it is. Lord!) " Stretch out Thy 
 hand as Thou didst to Peter of old and' suifer her not to sink." 
 
TBE GRATE OF A SIN 359 
 
 Outside the town Stowell had an impulse to run. He found 
 his motor-car where he had left it and pushed it into the road. 
 While lighting his lamp he thought he heard sounds from the 
 direction of the Castle. Had the escape hecome known? He 
 listened for anything that might denote alarm. There was nothing. 
 
 The Castle clock struck twelve. The fog had nearly gone 
 now, and looking back he saw the gloomy and forbidding fortress 
 towering over the sleeping town. A few stars had appeared 
 above it. 
 
 All was quiet. The condemned woman had escaped from 
 Castle Rushen. There was nothing to show that he himself had 
 been there. 
 
 Witih a last look back he started his engine and released his 
 levers, and his car shot away. 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT 
 
 THE GRAVE OF A SIN 
 
 Nearly three hours later Stowell was at the Point of Ayre, 
 where the head of the island looks into the sea. Leaving his car 
 at the end of the last paved road he walked over the bent-strewn 
 plain to where the tall, white, brown-belted light4iouse stands up 
 against sea and sky. The light-houseman, who had just put out 
 the light, seeing the Deemster approach, went down to meet him. 
 
 " May I go up to your lantern. Light-houseman? I've always 
 wanted to see the sun rise from there." 
 
 " With pleasure, your Honour," said the Light-houseman, and 
 he led the way up the circular stone stairway, through the eye of 
 the light-house, with its glistening columns of bevelled glass, to 
 the iron-railed gallery that ran like a scalf round its neck. 
 
 For a long half -hour Stowell walked to and fro there. He felt 
 as if he were on the prow of some mighty ship, with the sea racing 
 in white foam along the rocks on either side. Far below were the 
 booming waves ; the sea-fowl were calling in the midway air ; the 
 sky to the east was reddening ; the day was striding over the waters 
 and driving the trailing garments of the night before it, and the 
 sea was singing the great song of the dawn. 
 
 At last, straining his sight to the south, he saw what he had 
 come to see — a steamer with a red and black funnel. Kept back 
 during the dark hours by the fog on the coast, she was now 
 coming on at full-speed. 
 
 There was a pang in thinking that this was the last he was 
 to see of the two who were aboard of her, but there was a bound- 
 
360 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 less joy in it also. They -were united; they were happy; they 
 were safe; he had wiped out his offence against them. 
 
 He watched the vessel as she passed. She lurched a little as 
 she went through the cross-current of the Point. But now she 
 was out in the Channel ; now she was heading towards the Mull of 
 Galloway ; now she was fading into the northern mist and seemed 
 to be dropping off into another planet. 
 
 At half -past three Stowell was back in his car. He could go 
 home now with a cleaner heart, a surer conscience. It was a 
 beautiful morning. The sun had risen. It was slanting over his 
 shoulder as he drove along the grass-grown road on the north- 
 west coast, with the sea singing and dancing by his side over a 
 stretch of yellow sand. The lambs were bleating in the fields 
 and the larks were loud in the sky. 
 
 What relief ! What j oy ! His car was bounding on — past the 
 Lhen, the Nappin, the old Jurby church with its four-square tower 
 on the edge of the cliff — going faster than he knew, faster and stiU 
 faster, like a winged creature, parting the way as it went, making 
 the road itself to fly open, and the hedges, the trees, and the sleep- 
 ing farm-houses to slant off on either side, and coming round at 
 last, as with the heart of a bride, to the big gates of Ballamoar. 
 
 Home once more! 
 
 As he slackened speed and slid up the drive the rooks were 
 calling in the tall elms and the song-birds in the bushes were sing- 
 ing. As silently as possible he ran his car into the garage and 
 crept into the house. 
 
 The blinds were down and 'tihe rooms were dull with a yellow 
 light, like sunshine behind closed eyelids. The grandfather's clock 
 on the landing was striking four. Only four hours since he had 
 left Castletown ! 
 
 The servants were not yet stirring, and he stepped upstairs on 
 tiptoe, hoping to reach his room unheard, but as he passed Janet's 
 door she called to him. 
 
 " Is that you, Victor.? " 
 
 He answered, " Yes." 
 
 " How late you are, dear ! " 
 
 " Don't waken me in the morning." 
 
 In his bedroom he was partly conscious that familiar things 
 looked strange — or was it that another man had come back to them } 
 He undressed rapidly and got into bed, drawing a deep breath. 
 It was all over. Bessie Collister was gone. It was nearly impos- 
 sible that she could ever be traced and brought back. A monstrous 
 judicial crime had been prevented. He had been permitted to 
 prevent it. And now for the long, long rest of a dreamless sleep. 
 
THE GRAVE OF A BIN 361 
 
 But in the vague, intermediate half-world of consciousness 
 before sleep comes, he was aware of another, a warmer and more 
 secret motive. Fenella! " Tell him to come back to me! " Ah, 
 no, not until he had wiped out his fault. But now he could go to 
 her ! He had broken down the barrier between them. He had 
 buried his sin in the sea. 
 
 Thank God! Thank God! 
 
 And then sleep, deep sleep, and the breathless day coming on. 
 
 BXD OF FIFTH BOOK 
 
SIXTH BOOK 
 THE REDEMPTION 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE 
 
 THE BIRTH OP A LIE 
 
 Awakening in the " George " in the early hours of morning, 
 FeneUa heard a noise outside her window that was like the running 
 of a shallow river over a bed of small stones. She knew what it 
 was. It was the sovmd of the feet of the people who were coming 
 in crowds to stand outside the Castle walls and watch the slow- 
 moving fingers of the clock, until the hoisting of the black flag 
 over the tower should tell them that the invisible presence of 
 Death had come and gone. 
 
 When, as the clock was striking six, she crossed the market- 
 place on her way to 'the Castle, she found this crowd in great 
 commotion, hurrying to and fro and calling to each other in 
 agitated voices. 
 
 " Is it true? " 
 
 " So they're saying." 
 
 " God bless my soul ! " 
 
 The Cajstle gate was open and people had penetrated as far as 
 the Portcullis. An Inspector of Police, coming out hurriedly, 
 commanded them to go back. 
 
 " Away with you! Is it play-acting you've come to look at? 
 Smoking your pipes, too ! " 
 
 But without waiting to see his orders obeyed he hastened away 
 himself, shouting to somebody that he was going to knock up the 
 telegraph office. 
 
 The court-yard, when Fenella reached it, though less crowded 
 was as full of agitation. A blear-eyed man, who looked as if he 
 had just awakened from a fit of intoxication, was walking aim- 
 lessly to and fro. It was Shimmin, the turnkey, but when Fenella 
 asked him what had happened, he stared vacantly and made no 
 answer. A very tall man, wearing a cloth cap over his head and 
 ears and carrying a carpet-bag, was standing by the scaffold. This 
 must be " long Duggie Taggart " and when Fenella, shuddering 
 at sight of the man, asked him the same question, he shrugged bis 
 362 
 
THE BIRTH OF A LIE 3ft3 
 
 shoulders and turned away. At the foot of the draw-bridge the 
 High Bailiff and the jailer were in fierce altercation. 
 
 " I know nothing about it, I tell thee. Sir." 
 
 " Then you are a blockhead and a fool ! " 
 
 At length two elderly men, the Chaplain and the Doctor, came 
 down the Deemster's stairs, and then the truth, which Fenella had 
 partly surmised, became fully known to her. The condemned 
 woman had escaped during the night. There would be no execu- 
 tion that day. 
 
 Through a tumult of mixed feelings, Fenella was conscious of 
 a sense of immense relief. Her first thought was of Bessie's 
 mother, and she turned back to take the news to her. 
 
 The little house in Quay Lane had its door still closed, but 
 through the kitchen window, whereof the upper sash was partly 
 down, came the singing of a hymn in tired and husky voices, 
 
 " Jesus, lover of my soul. 
 Let me to Thy bosom fly." 
 
 It was not immediately that Fenella could get an answer to her 
 knocking, but at length the man of the house, in his ganzie and 
 long sea boots, opened the door, still singing. 
 
 The little low-ceiled kitchen was full of people, and the close 
 air of the place seemed to say that they had kept up their prayer- 
 meeting the night through. 
 
 On a chair bedstead against the opposite wall, Mrs. CoUister in 
 her cotton nightcap, from which long thin locks of her grey hair 
 were escaping, was rocking her body to the tune, while fumbling 
 with bony fingers a Methodist hymn-book which lay open before 
 her on the patchwork counterpane. 
 
 Fenella, with a warm heart for the old mother in her trouble, 
 pushed through to the foot of the bed, but Mrs. Collister was 
 terrified at the sight of her, thinking she was bringing bad tidings, 
 
 " Have they deceived me? " she cried. " Seven o'clock they 
 said. Is it all over? " 
 
 " Be calm," said Fenella, and then she delivered her message. 
 Bessie had gone from Castle Rushen. She was not to die that day. 
 
 A moment of vacant silence fell upon the room, such as seems to 
 fall on the world when the tide is at the bottom of the ebb. With 
 difficulty the old woman grasped what Fenella had said. Her 
 watery eyes looked round at her people as if asking them to help 
 her to understand. At length one of these cried, 
 
 " Glory to God ! It's the answer to our prayers." 
 
 And then the truth seemed to descend on the poor broken brain 
 
364 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 like a healing breath from heaven. Stretxihing out her match-like 
 arms, she seized Fenella's hands and said, 
 
 " I know who thou art. Thou art the Governor's daughter. Is 
 it the truth thou'rt telling me? " 
 
 " Indeed it is." 
 
 " My Bessie is out of prison ? " 
 
 " Yes, and nobody knows what has become of her." 
 
 A wild cry of joy burst from the old woman's throat. 
 
 "Liza! Liza Killey, wilt thou believe me now? Didn't I 
 tell thee it was the old Dempster himself that the Lord had sent 
 to take my child out of prison? " 
 
 A wave of new life seemed to come to her, and throwing hack 
 the clothes she struggled out of bed (her blue-veined legs and feet 
 showing bare under her cotton nightdress) and went down on her 
 knees to pray. But her prayer was drowned by the husky 
 voices of her companions, who had by this time raised a hymn 
 of thanksgiving. 
 
 Fenella turned to go, and the man and woman of the house 
 followed her to the door. 
 
 " What was that she said about the Deemster ? " 
 
 They told her what had happened the night before — ^how the 
 old woman had escaped into the streets and the Deemster had 
 brought her back to the house. 
 
 " Are you sure it was the Deemster ? " 
 
 " We thought so then, but she thrept us out it was his father 
 who is dead and buried, and now we don't know in the world if it 
 was or wasn't." 
 
 The singers were singing in triumphant tones — 
 
 " God moves in a mysterious may. 
 His wonders to perform." 
 
 Fenella, who had begun to tremble, turned back to the hotel. 
 The market-place was full of people, who were pouring into it 
 from every thoroughfare. On reaching her room she locked the 
 door, pulled down the window-blind, sat on the bed, covered her 
 eyes, and tried to tihink out what had happened. 
 
 The noise outside was like the surge of the sea, and like the 
 surge of the sea was the tumult in her heart and brain. 
 
 Could it be possible that Victor Stowell had helped Bessie 
 Collister to escape? She remembered what he had said to her 
 father — that if any attempt were made to carry out tihe sentence 
 he would prevent it. She remembered what she had said to him — 
 that never could there be anything between them while that girl lay 
 
THE BIBTH OP A LIE 365 
 
 in prison. He had been in Castletown the night before, and he 
 was the only man in the island who could have access to the Castle 
 without an order from the Governor or the Chief Constable. 
 
 But a Judge to break prison ! What would be the end of it? 
 Why had he done this incredible thing, risking everything ? Was 
 it solely because he could not allow that unhappy girl, who had 
 suffered so much for him already, to go to the gallows ? Or was 
 it, perhaps, because she herself had said .... 
 
 Suddenly a great quickening of her love for Stowell came over 
 her. If she had stumbled upon his secret she would protect it. 
 
 " But what can I do .? " she asked herself. 
 
 At one moment it occurred to her to run back to Quay Lane and 
 warn the good people there to say nothing more about ,the 
 Deemster. But no, that might awaken suspicion. They thought 
 Bessie s escape -was due to supernatural agencies, that it had come 
 as an answer to their prayers — ^let them continue to think so. 
 
 At seven o'clock she was in the train for Douglas and the tele- 
 graph poles were flying by. She must know what the Governor 
 was doing. But whatever her father might do her own course 
 was clear. 
 
 She must stand by Victor now, whatever happened. 
 
 II 
 
 In the cool sunshine of the early May morning Government 
 House lay asleep. The gardener was mowing a distant part of the 
 lawn when he saw a carriage drive rapidly up to the porch. Two 
 gentlemen got out of it, and in less time than it took him to empty 
 his grass-pan into his wheelbarrow they rang three times at 
 the door. 
 
 Inside the house nobody was yet stirring except old John, the 
 watchman, who was drawing the curtains and opening the windows. 
 He heard the bell and thought the postman had brought a regis- 
 tered letter. In his cloth shoes he was shuffling to the vestibule 
 when the bell rang again and yet again. 
 
 " Traa de looiar " (" Time enough "), he growled, but his 
 voice fell to a more deferential tone when he opened the door, and 
 sanv who was there. 
 
 " Our apologies to His Excellency, and say the Attorney- 
 General and the Chief Constable wish to see him immediately on 
 urgent business." 
 
 The two men stepped into the smoking-room, which was still 
 dark with the blinds down and rank with last night's tobacco smoke. 
 
 A few minutes later, the Governor entered in his dressing- 
 
366 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 gown over his pyjamas and with his bare feet in his heelless slip- 
 pers. And then the Attorney told him — the young woman who 
 was to have been executed that morning had escaped. 
 
 "Good God, no!" 
 
 " Only too true, Sir. Colonel Farrell has had an urgent tele- 
 gram from his Inspector a* Castletown." 
 
 " When did it happen? " 
 
 " During the night. The j ailer says he locked her up at eleven 
 and when he opened the cell at five the prisoner was gone." 
 
 "Where is the jailer.?" 
 
 " At the Castle still," said the Chief Constable, " but I've told 
 the police to send him up immediately." 
 
 The Governor rose from the seat into which he had dropped 
 and walked to and fro. 
 
 " Such a blow to the authority of the laiw — the escape of a pris- 
 oner on the eve of her execution ! " said the Attorney. 
 
 " Such a handle to the disorderly elements, too! " said the 
 Chief Constable. 
 
 " Good Lord, don't I know.'' Let me think! Let me think! " 
 
 The Governor drew up one of the window blinds and his eyes 
 fell on a steamer lying by the pier with smoke rising lazily from 
 her black and red funnels. 
 
 " If the woman escaped only a few hours ago," he said, " she 
 cannot have left the island yet. Have you given orders that the 
 passengers by the morning steamer shall be watched ? " 
 
 " Not yet, sir." 
 
 " Do so at once. If that fails, telegraph to your police in 
 every town and parish. Good gracious, in this pocket-handker- 
 chief of an island it ought to be possible to re-capture an escaped 
 prisoner in a day, even if she lies like a toad under a stone." 
 
 " We'll leave no stone unturned, sir." 
 
 " A woman ! A mere girl ! Unless the jailer or his people 
 deliberately opened the doors for her she must have had 
 assistance." 
 
 " That's what / say, your Excellency." 
 
 " Have you any idea who helped her ? " 
 
 "No ... . that is to say ... . " 
 
 " Where's young Gell, the Advocate ? " 
 
 " In his rooms in Athol-street .... I presume." 
 
 " Find out for certain. Come back at four this afternoon and 
 bring that blockhead of a jailer with you. And listen " (the men 
 were leaving the room), " try to keep this ridiculous thing quiet. 
 If it gets into the papers across the water all England will be 
 laughing at us." 
 
THE BIRTH OF A LIE 367 
 
 The Governor was again at the window, watching the Attorney- 
 General's carriage going rapidly down the drive, when he saw a 
 hackney car, containing Fenella, coming up to the house. 
 
 That sight started a new order of ideas. He rememhered 
 Stowell's threat — " If you order that girl's execution, it shall 
 never be caried out, because I shall prevent it." For three days 
 he had understood this to mean that the Deemster would appeal 
 over his head to the Imperial authorities. But Stowell had not 
 ■done so — he wasn't such a fool, he had remembered the bedevil- 
 ments of his own position. So the Governor had dismissed the 
 thought, and his anger at the son of his old friend had subsided. 
 But now the threat came back on him with a new interpretation. 
 Could it be possible.'' Such an unheard-of thing? 
 
 As soon as Fenella entered the house he called her into his 
 room and shut the door behind her. 
 
 " You have just come from Castletown.'' " 
 
 " Yes, father." 
 
 " Then you know what has happened? " 
 
 " Can you throw any light on it? " 
 
 " Light on it? " 
 
 " I mean .... have you seen anything of Stowell since we 
 spoke of him last ? " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 " Nor heard from him? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Do you think it likely that .... But it is impossible. 
 No responsible person in his sense oould do such a thing. It 
 must be the other one." 
 
 " What other, father? " 
 
 " Young Gell, of course. He is the only man in the island 
 who could wish that girl to escape — ^the only one who would be 
 fool enough to help her to do so. 
 
 Fenella went to her room with a heart at ease. She was sorry 
 for Gell, very sorry, but in the consuming selfishness of her love 
 for Stowell she found a secret joy in the thought that suspicion 
 was being diverted from the real culprit. 
 
 Victor was safe thus far. But what would he do himself? 
 What was he now doing? 
 
 Ill 
 
 It was near to noon when Stowell awoke at Ballamoar. His 
 bedroom (formerly his father's) faced to the south and flashes of 
 
368 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 sunshine from the chinks of the window curtains were crossing the 
 bed on which he lay with his head on his arm. 
 
 It was a startling moment. 
 
 His long sleep had washed his brain as in a spiritual bath, and 
 with the awakening of his body his conscience had awakened also. 
 The events of the previous night rolled back on him like a flood, 
 and now, for the first time, he saw what he had done. 
 
 To prevent the law from committing a crime he had committed 
 a crime against the law ! He, the Judge, sworn to uphold Justice, 
 had deliberately betrayed it! Had anything so monstrous ever 
 been heard of before } 
 
 After a while, through the deafening buzzing of his brain, he 
 became aware of the droning sound of voices in the room below, 
 and then of their sharp clack as the speakers (they were Janet 
 and Joshua ScariF) stepped out of the house to the gravel path in 
 front of it. 
 
 " No, don't waken his Honour, Miss Curphey. He hasn't been 
 well lately, and sleep does no harm to anyone. Besides he'll hear 
 the bad news soon enough." 
 
 " 'Deed he will, Mr. Scarff." 
 
 " It will be a terrible shock to him — especially if my suspicions 
 about a certain person prove to be justified. But that's the way, 
 you see — one act of wrong-doing leads to another. Pity! 
 Great pity ! " 
 
 It was out! Stowell felt as if the bed under him were rocking 
 from the first tremor of an earthquake. 
 
 Half-an-hour later he was at breakfast downstairs. For a 
 long time, Janet was trying to break the news to him. At last it 
 came. The young woman who was to have been executed that 
 morning had escaped. Joshua ScarfF had had it from the Inspec- 
 tor at Ramsey — it was being telegraphed all over the island. 
 
 For the sake of appearances Stowell made an exclamation of 
 surprise, despising himself for doing so and feeling as if the toast 
 in his mouth were choking him. 
 
 " It's impossible not to be glad," said Janet, " that the poor 
 guilty creature has escaped the gallows, but Joshua thinks things 
 are not likely to end there." 
 
 " And what does he say ? . . . . 
 
 " He says she must have had an accomplice, and when the man 
 is found out it wUl be the worse for both of them." 
 
 " And who .... who does Joshua think . . . . " 
 
 " Alick GeU. It seems he put appearances 'against himself at 
 the trial, poor boy ! " 
 
 Instead of going to town that day, as he had intended to do 
 
THE BIRTH OF A LIE 369 
 
 Stowell rambled through the trackless Curragha. He was trying 
 to be alone with the melancholy swish of the sally bushes and the 
 mournful cry of the curlews. But his anxiety to know what was 
 being done brougiht him ba<;k to the house. Hearing nothing 
 therCj he walked to the village for a copy of the insular news- 
 paper. He found some excuse for speaking to everybody he met 
 on the road — on other subjects^ though, always on other subjects. 
 
 At the door of the little general store, with its mixed odour of 
 many condiments coming out to him, he stopped and called, 
 
 " How's the rheumatism this morning. Auntie Kitty? " 
 
 " Aw, better, your Honour, a taste better to-day. But it's 
 moral sorry I am to hear the bad newses you've had yourself, Sir. 
 It's feeling it terrible you'll be, your Honour — you and the young 
 man being the same as brothers. It will kill his mother — and her 
 such a proud stomach. The woman couldn't see the sun for the 
 boy, and she's been fighting the father all his life for him." 
 
 On his way back he met Cain, the constable, looking large 
 and important. 
 
 " I'm sarching for them two runaways," he said, with his short 
 asthmatical breathing, " and the Chief Constable is telling me I'll 
 have to be finding them if they're lying like a toad under a stone." 
 
 Gell again ! The report of the escape had passed over the 
 island with the swift ilight of a bird of prey — everywhere he oould 
 hear the flapping of its wings. And to the question of who could 
 have assisted the young woman to escape from a place like Castle 
 Rushen there was only one answer — Gell. 
 
 Towards nightfall Joshua ScariF called at Ballamoar on his 
 way home from town. Things had turned out as he had expected 
 — suspicion had fastened on Mr. Gell, and the Governor had 
 ordered the police to scour the island for him. 
 
 " But everybody is sorry for your Honour. His friend! His 
 bosom friend ! Pity ! Great pity ! " 
 
 Gell ! Always Gell ! Again Stowell felt as if the earth were 
 rocking beneath him. Where had his head been that he had not 
 thought of this before — ^that in helping Alick Gell to go away 
 with Bessie CoUister he had put him into the position of the 
 guilty man — guilty not only of the prison-breaking, but also of the 
 earlier and uglier oifence of being the girl's fellow-sinner ? 
 
 He had thought he had buried his sin in the sea — ^had he only 
 cast the burden of it upon Gell ? 
 
 He recalled Alick' gratitude on going away, the undeserved 
 praises which had cut to the heart, and then thought of Gell (far 
 away in a foreign coxintry) coming to hear of the evil name he 
 had left behind. 
 24 
 
370 THE MA.eiTj<Jii ujr ma.js 
 
 What was Alick to think of him then ? That what he had done 
 had not been at the call of friendship, but of mere self -protection 
 — ^to divert suspicion from himself, to remove the only witnesses 
 against him, and thus to build his future life on the unprotected 
 name of an innocent man? 
 
 " Must I let that lie run on without saying a word against it? " 
 
 And then Fenella ! He had seen himself going to her and say- 
 ing, " Now that the girl is no longer in prison the barrier between 
 us is broken down." He had seen himself marrying her, and then 
 rising higher and higiher in the esteem of his people, with that 
 brave woman by his side. 
 
 But now — what now? 
 
 Fenella would find him out ! It was impossible that she could 
 live long with a man who carried such a corroding secret without 
 discovering it sooner or later. And when sihe had done so what 
 would she think of him? A traitor to his friend and to the law! 
 A Judge who had broken his oath ! A wrong-doer, not a righter 
 of the wronged, sitting in judgment upon others, yet himself a 
 criminal ! A man of honour to the outer world, a hypocrite in his 
 own house; a pillar of the island in the eyes of his people, a liar 
 in the eyes of his wife ! 
 
 " No, God forbid it ! I cannot let that lie run on. I cannot 
 allow myself to be pilloried in life-long hypocrisy." 
 
 All the same he would wait to see what the Governor might 
 do next. It was no good acting hastily. 
 
 CHAPTER FORTY 
 
 THE CALL OF A WOMAn's SOUL 
 
 At four o'clock that day the Attorney-General and the Chief 
 Constable had returned to Government House and were sitting, on 
 either side of the Governor, with the jailer standing before them. 
 Fenella stood by the window, apparently gazing into the garden 
 but listening intently. 
 
 " Come now," said tihe Governor, " tell us what you know of 
 this matter." 
 
 The jailer knew nothing. Changing repeatedly the leg on 
 which he was standing and mopping his forehead with a coloured 
 handkerchief, he protested absolute ignorance. 
 
 " After Miss Stanley left the Castle a piece after ten o'clock 
 I locked the poor bogh in her cell . . . . " 
 
 " Do you mean the prisoner? " 
 
 " Who else, your Excellency? " 
 
THB CALL OF A WOMAN'S SOUL 371 
 
 " Then say the prisoner." 
 
 " Well, I locked the prisoner in her cell a piece after ten 
 o'clock last night and when I went back at five this morning to 
 take her a bite of breakfast . . . . " 
 
 " Breakfast? Where was your female warder? " 
 
 " Mistress Mylrea? Sick of the heart since General Gaol. 
 They're telling me she died last night. Sir." 
 
 " Where was your turnkey then ? " 
 
 " Willie Shimmin ? He went out on lave for a couple of hours 
 on Sunday afternoon and didn't return on the night, Sir." 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me you were alone in the Castle on the 
 night before an execution? " 
 
 " Aw, yes, alone enough, Sir." 
 
 " Colonel Farrell! " said the Governor, turning sharply upon 
 the Chief Constable. 
 
 That gentleman, although embarrassed, had many excuses. 
 He had not been made aware of the situation, and if this block- 
 head had only communicated wibh the police-station .... 
 
 " Well, well, enough of that now. Let us have the facts," 
 said the Governor, and turning back to the j ailer he said, 
 
 " Did anybody come to the Castle last night after Miss 
 Stanley left it? " 
 
 "No, Sir, no!" 
 
 " And your keys ? Did they ever leave your possession ? " 
 
 " Never, Sir." 
 
 " After you locked the prisoner in her cell, what did you do? " 
 
 " I went back to the guard-room and sat by the fire. Sir." 
 
 "And fell asleep, I suppose?" 
 
 "I'll give in I slept a wink or two. Sir." 
 
 " Where were your keys while you were asleep ? " 
 
 " On the table beside me. Sir." 
 
 "And when you awoke where were they? " 
 
 " In the same place, your Excellency." 
 
 " Were the gates of the Castle locked last night? " 
 
 " Aw, 'deed they were, Sir." 
 
 "And were they locked this morning? " 
 
 " They were that. Sir." 
 
 The Attorney-General, who had been leaning forward, 
 dropped back. 
 
 " Extraordinary ! " he said. " The whole thing has the appear- 
 ance of the supernatural." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " said the Governor. " Vondy, do you know Mr. 
 Gell, the Advocate? " 
 
 " I'm sorry to say. Sir . . . . " 
 
STB THE MASTER OF MATH 
 
 " Never mjnd about sorry — do you? " 
 
 " I do. Sir." 
 
 " When did you see him last? " 
 
 " At General Gaol, when he was out of himself, poor man, and 
 we had to lock him up for threatening the Dempster." 
 
 " Did he never come to the Castle afterwards to see the 
 prisoner? " 
 
 " Never, Sir." 
 
 " Will you swear that he was not there last night? " 
 
 " I will — before God Almighty, Sir." 
 
 " Then, if the cell was locked all night and the Castle gate« 
 were locked, how do you account for the escape of your prisoner ? " 
 
 The jailer smoothed the hair over his forehead and then said, 
 
 " Bolts and bars are nothing to the Lord, Sir." 
 
 The Governor gasped. 
 
 " Do you mean to say that while you were asleep before the 
 fire in the guard-room an angel from heaven carried your prisoner 
 through the Castle walls ? " 
 
 " Aw, well .... I wouldn't say no to that. Sir. We're read- 
 ing of the like in the Good Book anyway." 
 
 " Fenella," cried the Governor, " take this fool away and turn 
 him out of the house." 
 
 When Fenella, who had been quivering all over, had left the 
 room, followed by the jailer, the Governor turned to the 
 Chief Constable. 
 
 " The woman was not on the morning steamer? " 
 
 "No, Sir." 
 
 " And what about Gell? " 
 
 " We broke open the door of his room in Athol Street and 
 found he had gone." 
 
 " Ah ! Have you come upon any trace of him elsewhere ? " 
 
 " Yes ; he slept at the Railway Inn at Ballaugh on Saturday 
 night and took a ticket for St. John's by the first train on 
 Sunday morning." 
 
 " Anything else ? " 
 
 " The blacksmith at Ballasalla believes he saw him on Sunday 
 evening going in the fog in the direction of Derby Haven." 
 
 " Aha ! Did any fishing boat leave Castletown last night ? " 
 
 " The Manx boats do not go out on Sunday, Sir." 
 
 " Any trading steamers then ? " 
 
 " I don't know. Sir." 
 
 " Inquire at once. If your constables do not find the fugitives 
 in the island we must send a ' Wanted ' across the water." 
 
 " I'll draw one up. Sir." 
 
THE OALL OF A WOMAN'S SOUL 373 
 
 " Got the necessary photographs? " 
 
 " One of the girl, -which was found in the young man's rooms. 
 Sir. Also one of the young man which we found in the girl's cell, 
 but it is not of much use, being scratched and blurred as if it had 
 been lying in water." 
 
 " No matter ! The Deemster is sure to have another. I'll 
 write and ask him to meet us here at eleven on Wednesday morn- 
 ing. He'll be able to help you to your personal description and 
 issue the warrant at the same time." 
 
 II 
 
 Meantime, Fenella had taken the j adler into the drawing-room 
 and closed the door behind them. 
 
 " Mr. Vondy," she said in a low voice, " you can trust me. 
 Nothing you may say in this room will ever be repeated. Did not 
 somebody come to Castle Rushen last night after I left it? " 
 
 The old man tried in vain to look into the bdg moist eyes that 
 were on him, but at length he dropped his own and said, 
 
 " It is no use, miss. There will be no rest on me in the night 
 unless I tell the truth to somebody. There can be no harm telling 
 it to you neither — going to be the man's wife soon they're saying. 
 It's truth enough, miss — 'Somebody did come." 
 
 " Was it the Deemster? " 
 
 " It was that," said the j ailer, and then he told her everything 
 that had happened. 
 
 Fenella's head became giddy and her cheeks blushed crimson. 
 In a flash she saw what had happened. Victor had deceived the 
 jailer. Did the old man know it? Lowering her eyes she said, 
 
 " You didn't say this when the Governor questioned you — ihad 
 you a reason for not doing so ? " 
 
 " I had. The Deemster made me promise to say nothing." 
 
 And then came the other and still more degrading story — the 
 story of the intimidation Stowell had put upon the jailer to keep 
 his visit secret. 
 
 Fenella felt as if she would sink through the floor in shame, but 
 all the same she found herself saying, 
 
 " You've known the Deemster all his life, haven't you? " 
 
 " I have. I was reared on the land," said the jailer, and then, 
 raising himself to his full height, " I'm a Ballamoar myself, miss." 
 
 " Then you will keep the promise you gave him? " 
 
 " Trust me for that, miss." 
 
 " But if anjrlhing should happen to yourself as the consequence 
 of last night's escape . . . . " 
 
374 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " The father put me in the Castle and the son won't see. them 
 fling me out of it." 
 
 " But if he should be overruled by the Governor and unable 
 to help you . . . . " 
 
 " I'll take my chance mth him. What's it they're saying? — 
 the Ballamoar will out, miss." 
 
 Tears sprang to FeneUa's eyes, but her heart beat high. 
 
 " Mr. Vondy," she said, " he has not been well lately, and per- 
 haps he doesn't always know what he is saying. If you should 
 ever come to think that what he told you was not the truth .... 
 the whole truth, I mean . . . . " 
 
 " Maybe so. I've been thinking as much myself since five this 
 morning. But that's all as one to me, miss. Tell him Tommy 
 Vondy will keep his word." 
 
 The jailer was gone, and Fenella was sitting with her hands 
 over her eyes when she heard voices in the corridor and footsteps 
 going tow^ards the porch. 
 
 " You're right there, your Excellency " (it was the Attorney- 
 General who was speaking). " The authority of law in this 
 island has received a blow, and already the disorderly elements 
 are stirring up strife." 
 
 "Who, for instance? " 
 
 " Qualtrough of the Keys and the man Baldromma." 
 
 " Farrell " (it was the Governor in a stern voice), " quash that 
 instantly. If there's any rioting send for the soldiers from 
 Castletown to assist your police." 
 
 " I will, your Excellency." 
 
 " And listen ! Get rid of that blockhead of a jailer. Appoint 
 somebody in his place and give him authority to employ his own 
 warders. He'll have his prison full enough presently." 
 
 The closing of the outer door rang through the corridor, and at 
 the next moment the Governor was in the drawing-room. 
 
 " Fenella," he said, " do you happen to know if Stowell has a 
 photograph of young Gell, the Advocate ? " 
 
 Before she had time to reflect, Fenella answered that he had. 
 It was taken in America, and stood on the mantelpiece in the 
 library at Ballamoar. 
 
 " But why? " 
 
 " Because I want him to bring it with him when he comes on 
 Wednesday to issue the warrant." 
 
 "What warrant?" 
 
 " The warrant for the arrest of Gell, for breaking prison and 
 aiding in the escape of the girl CoUister." 
 
 " But, father, they are friends — life-long friends." 
 
THE CALL OF A WOMAN'S SOUL 375 
 
 " What of that? Stowell is Deemster, and you heard the oath 
 he took, didn't you? ' Without fear or friendship, love or gain.' 
 His duty as a Judge is to administer Justice, and as long as I am 
 here I'll see he does it." 
 
 Ill 
 
 During the remainder of that day and the whole of the follow- 
 ing one Fenella was a prey to the cruellest perplexity. Would 
 Victor Stowell issue that warrant for the arrest of the innocent 
 man, being himself the guilty one ? 
 
 How could he refuse ? It would be his duty to issue the war- 
 rant — what excuse could he make for not doing so? And then 
 what a temptation to let things go on as usual ! Although he had 
 broken prison, and therefore his oath as a Judge, how easily he 
 might persuade himself that it had only been to snatch that poor 
 girl from a wicked Statute ! 
 
 Yet if Victor issued that warrant for the arrest of Gell he 
 would be a lost man for ever after. No matter how high he might 
 rise he would go down, down, down until his very soul would perish. 
 
 " It cannot be ! It must not be ! It shall not ! " 
 
 She wanted to run to Ballamoar and say, " Don't do it. If 
 you have done wrong confess and take the consequences." 
 
 Oh, what did she care about their quarrel now? It was no 
 longer Bessie Collister's life, but Victor Stowell's soul that was 
 in peril. 
 
 But no, she could not ask him to act under compulsion. He 
 must act of his own free will. In the valley of the shadow of sin 
 the guilty soul must walk alone. 
 
 " But is there nothing I can do for him? " she asked herself. 
 
 Yes, there was one thing — one thing only. She could pray. 
 For long hours on the night before Stowell was to come to Govern- 
 ment House Fenella knelt in her bed and prayed for him. 
 
 " O God help him ! God help him ! Help him to resist this 
 great temptation." 
 
 At length peace came to her. Somewhere in the dead waste 
 of the night she seemed to receive an answer to her prayers. 
 
 " He'll do the right, whatever it may cost him," she thought, 
 and as the day was dawning she fell asleep. 
 
 But when she awoke in the morning she felt as if her heart 
 would break. If Stowell confessed and took the consequences (as 
 she had prayed he might do) he would be lost to her for ever. He 
 would have to give up his Judgeship, be banished from the island, 
 and become an outcast and a wanderer. 
 
376 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Is that to be the end of everything between us? After all 
 this waiting? " 
 
 Her eyes were full of tears when she looked at herself in the 
 glass, but they were shining like stars for all that. An immense 
 pity for Stowell had taken possession of her. An immense faith 
 in him also. He must be the most unhappy man alive, but he was 
 her man now; and nothing on earth should part them. 
 
 Going down to breakfast she met Miss Green on the stairs. 
 The old lady was full of some breathless story of rioting in 
 Douglas the evening before. How remote it all sounded! She 
 hardly heard what was being said to her. 
 
 Coming upon the maid in the corridor she said, 
 
 " The Deemster is to call to-day, Catherine. Tell him I wish 
 to see him before he sees the Governor." 
 
 In the breakfast-room her father was looking over a printer's 
 proof on a sheet of foolscap paper. It was headed with the 
 Manx coat-of-arms and the words " ISLE OF MAN CON- 
 STABULARY," and had an empty space near the top for a 
 block to be made from a photograph. 
 
 " But that is of no consequence now," thought Fenella, " no 
 consequence whatever." 
 
 CHAPTER FORTY-ONE 
 
 IN THE VALLEY OP THE SHADOW 
 
 " Good heavens, what does it matter? A lie is only danger- 
 ous when it does some harm ! " 
 
 Stowell awoke on the second day after the escape putting his 
 situation to himself so. Where was the harm if Gel! was sus- 
 pected ? He had gone with the woman he loved. He was happy. 
 What would Alick care about the evil name he had left behind him ? 
 
 " Then where's the harm? " he asked himself. 
 
 He would let things go on as usual — of course he would. Only 
 he must make sure that the fugitives had got clear away. 
 
 Remembering that he had seen placards of the Atlantic sail- 
 ings in the railway-station, he walked over to the station from the 
 glen. It was all right — a big Atlantic liner was timed to leave 
 Queenstown at twelve that day. It was now half-past twelve. 
 Gell and Bessie would be out on the open sea by this time — 
 steaming past Kinsale where the Manx boats fished for mackerel. 
 
 "Where's the harm?" 
 
 But just as he was leaving the station with a sense of security 
 and even triumph, a train from Douglas drew up at the platform. 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 377 
 
 The guard shouted something to the station-master; and, looking 
 back, Stowell saw a crowd gathering about a first-class carriage. 
 
 Somebody was being assisted to alight. It was the Speaker, 
 He was utterly helpless. Between two members of the House of 
 Keys the stricken man was half led, half carried to a dog-cart that 
 was waiting for him at the gate. 
 
 His mouth was agape, his legs were dragging behind him, and 
 his large hands were shaken by senile trembling. He did not 
 speak, but as he went by he looked up, and Stowell felt that from 
 his red eyes a mute malediction was being thrown at him. 
 
 When the dog-cart had gone, with the Speaker stretched out 
 in it, stiff as a dead horse, and one of the Keys to see him home, 
 the other joined Stowell and walked down the road by his side. 
 
 " Then your Honour hasn't heard what has happened ? " 
 
 "No. What?" 
 
 There had been a sitting of the Keys that morning. The 
 debate had been on some new scheme of land tenure — a thinly 
 disguised form of confiscation. The Speaker had opposed it pas- 
 sionately, saying a man had a right to keep what he had earned and 
 hand it on to his children. Then Qualtrough (a firebrand who 
 possessed nothing) had taunted him with the unfortunate affair 
 of yesterday. Why did he want to hand on his land, his son 
 having run away with the woman he had corrupted? 
 
 A terrible scene had followed. The Speaker had had one of 
 his brain-storms. His neck had swelled until it was nearly as 
 broad as his face. " Sit down, Sir," he had shouted, but Qual- 
 trough had refused to do so. At length, overcome by the clamour 
 of his enemies and the silence of his friends, the Speaker had risen 
 to resign. Since he could not maintain the authority of the chair 
 he had no choice but to get out of it. 
 
 It had been a pitiful spectacle. None of them who were 
 fathers had been able to look at it with dry eyes. The old man 
 was trembling like a leaf and his legs seemed to be giving way 
 under him. 
 
 " They say the sins of the fathers are visited- upon the children, 
 but maybe it's as true the other way about. I'm going blind and 
 deaf. The sands of my life are running out . . . . " 
 
 He swayed forward and they thought he would have fallen on 
 his face, but the Secretary of the House caught him in his arms, 
 and then two of them were nominated to bring him home. 
 
 " Sorry to say it to your Honour, being his friend," said the 
 member of the Keys, as they parted at the turn of the road, " but 
 that young fellow has something to answer for." 
 
 That lie had done harm then ! Was this the mystery of sin — 
 
378 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 that it must go on and on, from consequence to consequence, deep 
 as the sea and unsearchable as the night ? 
 
 On returning to Ballamoar, Stowell found Janet in great agi- 
 tation. Mrs. Gell had sent across to ask if Robbie could run into 
 Ramsey to fetch Doctor Clucas. The doctor had come and gone. 
 The Speaker had had a stroke. It was his second. The third 
 would almost certainly prove fatal. 
 
 All that day Stowell was shaken by a, chill terror. If the 
 Speaker died would Alick Gell come back to claim his inheritance .'' 
 If so he would hear it said on all sides that he had killed his 
 father by the disgrace he had brought on him. 
 
 What then ? Would he tell the whole truth under that terrible 
 temptation, and thus bring down Stowell himself to ruin 
 and extinction? 
 
 " But what nonsense I'm talking," thought Stowell. 
 
 Gell could never come back, because Bessie could never do so. 
 Then who was to know that it was a lie that Gell had killed 
 his father? 
 
 Suddenly came the thought, " I am to know." 
 
 This fell on him like a thunderbolt. How was he to marry 
 Fenella with a thought like that in his heart? It would be witii 
 him night and day. He might even blurt it out in his sleep. 
 " Assassin ! It was I who killed the old man by letting that 
 lie go on." 
 
 Feeling feverish and unable to remain indoors, he went out to 
 walk on the gravel path in front of the house. The fresh air 
 revived him and he took possession of himself again. 
 
 " If the Speaker dies it will be the act of God," he thought. 
 
 He woilld be in no way responsible. Neither would Gell. If 
 rumour charged the son with killing the father it would be a lie — 
 a damned lie, manufactured by Fate, the great liar. 
 
 It was not as if Gell were in any danger — the danger of arrest 
 for instance. That would be different. But Gell was in no dan- 
 ger — none whatever. 
 
 " Therefore bury the thing! Bury it and go on as usual," he 
 told himself. 
 
 The evening was closing in. It was beautiful and limpid. 
 With a high step Stowell was walking to and fro on the path. 
 Visions were rising before him of Gell and Bessie Collister on the 
 big liner, ploughing their way through the darkening ocean to that 
 free continent " where the clouds sailed higher " — Archibald 
 Alexander and his sister Elizabeth going out to the new world 
 to begin a new life. 
 
 He had visions of Fenella too — ^how he would go up to Govern- 
 
IS TEE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 379 
 
 ment House to-morrow morning. " Tell him to come back to me," 
 she said to Janet, and now he would go. How happy he was going 
 to be! 
 
 " Surely I've a right to some happiness after all I've gone 
 through." 
 
 He gave himself up to the intoxication of living by anticipation 
 through those most blissful moments to a man and woman who 
 love each other — ^the first moments of reconciliation after a quarrel. 
 
 Night had fallen. It was very dark. The late birds were 
 silent, and only the soft young leaves of May were rustling in the 
 darkness overhead with that gentleness that is like the whispering 
 of angels. All at once a red light j ogged up from the gate, making 
 shadows among the trees that bordered the drive. 
 
 " Good evenin', Dempster ! A letter for you. Sir." 
 
 It was Killip the postman. 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Killip," said Stowell, taking the letter. He 
 could not see it in the darkness, but at the touch of the large 
 envelope a heavy foreboding came over him. 
 
 " I suppose you've heard about that affair, your Honour? " 
 
 "What affair?" 
 
 " Tommy Vondy. He's got himself kicked out of the Castle 
 for letting that girl escape. The gorm ! He's my first cousin, and 
 he's in his seventy-seven, but he was always a toot, was Tommy ! ' 
 
 " Good-night, Mr. KiUip." 
 
 " Good-night, your Honour ! " 
 
 When Stowell returned to the porch he looked at his letter by 
 the light of the lamp on the landing. It was from the Governor. 
 He went into the Library and tore it open. 
 
 II 
 
 " Dear Stowell, — Of course you have heard what has 
 happened. The escaped prisoner must be recaptured and 
 dealt with according to law. And not she only, but her 
 accomplice also. You know who that is — ^young Gell. The 
 evidence against him is overwhelming. We have traced him 
 almost to the door of the Castle on Sunday evening, and find, 
 too, that a trading steamer left Castletown late the same 
 night. There can hardly be a doubt that the fugitives sailed 
 in her. We must find where she has gone to and bring her 
 passengers back. 
 
 " Come here to-morrow morning to issue the necessary 
 warrant and assist Farrell to the ' distinguishing marks ' 
 which may be needful for Gell's identification. I know 
 
380 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 there is a certain risk in re-opening this wretched inquiry. I 
 had hoped to bury it once for all when I decided on what 
 you thought the extreme step of sending the guilty woman 
 to the gallows. But law and order must be upheld, and the 
 sooner we can silence the people, who are saying we are 
 winking at the corruption of justice to spare the son of the 
 Speaker and the friend of the Deemster, the better 
 for everybody. 
 
 " Be here at eleven. We (the Attorney and the Chief 
 Constable are coming) will be waiting for you. Good Lord, 
 haven't you been long enough away from this house any- 
 way? If there are strained relations between you and 
 Fenella let them be faced squarely and straightened out at 
 once — Yours, etc., 
 
 " John S. Stanley, 
 " Brig.-Gen.. K.C.B. 
 
 " P.S. — Fenella says you have a photograph of Gell 
 which was taken in America some years ago. It is probably 
 the only one on the island, and therefore invaluable to 
 Farrel at this moment. Bring it with you — don't forget." 
 
 StoweU was struck with stupor. Alick Gell mas in danger, 
 then, and the whole situation was different. 
 
 Raising his eyes after reading the Governor's letter he saw 
 Gell's photograph on the mantelpiece in front of him. At that 
 sight a flame of passion took possession of him, and snatching up 
 the picture he flung it in the fire. 
 
 " No, by God! " he said aloud. And if Farrell ever asked 
 him for " distinguishing marks " towards Gell's identification he 
 would take him by the throat and choke him. 
 
 But what about the warrant ? Any Justice of the peace might 
 issue it, but if the Governor asked him to do so the request would 
 be equal to a command. Suppose he did, what would be the 
 result? Bessie would be brought back and executed. Worse than 
 that, even worse in its different way, Gell would be arrested and 
 tried — perhaps by him, and under his warrant ! 
 
 " No, no, no ! It would be a crime — a base, cowardly, infa- 
 mous, abominable crime ! " 
 
 The veins of his forehead swelled as he thought of the trial. 
 It would be more terrible than the other one. To sit in judgment 
 on an innocent man, being himself the guilty one — ^not Jeffries, 
 or Braxfield, or Brandon or Harebottle or any of the bewigged 
 barbarians whose names befouled the annals of jurisprudence had 
 done anything so awful. 
 
IN TEE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 381 
 
 " Never," he thought. " Never in this world." 
 
 Yet what alternative had he? After dinner (he had tried 
 to eat to keep up appearances before Janet) he drew to the fire 
 and tried to think things out. He had sat long hours in pain, and 
 the fire had died down, when a kind of melancholy peace came to 
 him and he thought he saw what he had to do. 
 
 He had to get up early in the morning, reach Government 
 House before the others had arrived, see the Governor alone and 
 say to him in secret, 
 
 " I cannot issue this warrant for the arrest of Alick Gell for 
 breaking prison to procure that girl's release because / did it." 
 
 What would happen then.-' The Governor (he was a just man 
 if a hard one) would say, 
 
 " In that case, you cannot be a Judge in this island any longer." 
 
 But that would be all. Out of consideration for his daughter, 
 and perhaps for the man who was to become his daughter's hus- 
 band, the Governor would go no farther. Some show he might 
 make of publishing the police notice, but he would never send to 
 a foreign country. 
 
 There would be no scandal. The public would know nothing. 
 They had heard that the new Deemster had been unwell, and would 
 be told that his health had broken down altogether, and he had had 
 to resign his office. It would be a month's talk, and then — 
 Time would cover up the whole miserable story in the merciful vein 
 in which it hides so many of our misdoings. 
 
 And Fenella? He would tell Fenella also. It would be a 
 shock to her, but she would be on his side now. She would see 
 that he had only tried to prevent a judicial murder, to secure the 
 happiness of two unhappy creatures who, but for him, would 
 have been plunged in misery. They would marry and go away 
 from the island, to Switzerland perhaps, and live there for the 
 rest of their lives. 
 
 " Yes, that's it, that's it," he told himself. 
 
 It was a cruel comforting — ^like the surgeon's knife, which, 
 while taking away a man's disease, takes some of his life- 
 blood also. 
 
 He thought of his father, how proud the old Deemster had 
 been of his judicial position and how anxious that his son should 
 succeed to it — it was pitiful. He thought of Fenella, what great 
 things they had planned to do when he became a Judge, and now 
 all their hopes had fallen to dust and ashes — it was agonising. 
 
 Was it necessary? Inevitable? To be cast aside on life's 
 highway in suffering and shame everlasting; to be like a wretched 
 ship that lies at the bottom of the sea, swaying to the ground- 
 
382 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 swell below, and moaning like a lost soul to the moans of the 
 other wrecks in the womb of the ocean? 
 
 It was not as if he had injured anybody. He had done harm 
 to nobody, and nothing. Yet he must do what he had thought of. 
 There was no help for it. 
 
 It was late. The household was asleep. The log fire he had 
 been crouching over had fallen to ashes on the hearth. He was 
 shivering and he goj; up to go to bed. Before leaving the library 
 he sat at the desk under his mother's picture and wrote — 
 
 " Please call me at six. I must take the first train to Douglas." 
 
 He was laying this on the table on the landing, lighting his 
 candle and putting out the lamp, when he heard wheels on the 
 carriage drive, and then a loud ringing at the front door bell. 
 
 Who could have come at this time of night? Candle in hand 
 he went down and opened the door. 
 
 It was Joshua Scarff. 
 
 CHAPTER FORTY-TWO 
 
 " HE DROVE OUT THE MAN " 
 
 " Sorry to trouble you at this hour, your Honour, but I had to 
 come and tell you what has happened." 
 
 " What is it, Joshua? " 
 
 " There has been a fearful outbreak of lawlessness in Douglas 
 this evening — ^breaking of shop-windows, looting of the houses of 
 well-to-do people, assaults and outrages of all kinds." 
 
 " What is the reason of it? " 
 
 " Mob reason, and you know what that is, your Honour. They 
 say justice in the island is corrupt. If you are rich you get 
 whatever you want. If you are poor you get nothing. A guilty 
 man and a guilty woman have been allowed to escape. Why? 
 Because the man belongs to a family of ' the big ones ' and is a 
 friend of the Deemster." 
 
 "Who say that?" 
 
 " Old Qualtrough and Dan Baldromma." 
 
 " Baldromma? If his step-daughter has escaped what has he 
 to complain of? " 
 
 " Nothing, but that's not the worst. Sir." 
 
 "What is?" 
 
 " The Governor has telegraphed for soldiers from across the 
 water. They are to come over by the first boat in the morning. 
 It's a frightful blunder. Sir." 
 
" HE DROVE OUT THE MAN " 383 
 
 Beads of perspiration were rolling down from Joshua's 
 bald crown. 
 
 " There'll be bloodshed, and Manxmen won't stand for that. 
 They've been their own masters for a thousand years. The Gover- 
 nor can't treat them as if they were Indian coolies." 
 
 " What do you think ought to be done? " 
 
 " That's what I've come to say, Sir. I had gone to bed but 
 I couldn't take rest, so I got Willie Dawson to drive me over. The 
 people may be wrong about justice, but the only way to pacify 
 them is to prove it." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " The guilty man in this case must give himself up." 
 
 " Give himself up ? " 
 
 Joshua took off his coloured spectacles and wiped the damp 
 off them. 
 
 " I thought your Honour might know wihere he was. He 
 can't be far away. Sir." 
 
 " WeU? " 
 
 " He ought to be told to deliver himself up to the Courts to 
 save the island from ruin. And if he won't he ought to 
 be denounced." 
 
 " Denounced? " 
 
 " It will be a terrible ordeal — I know that. Sir. Your friend ! 
 Your life-long friend ! Pity ! Great pity ! " 
 
 For a perceptible time Stowell did not speak. Then, in a voice 
 which Joshua had never heard before, he said, 
 
 " Go home and go to bed, Joshua. I'll see what can be done." 
 
 Joshua had gone, the door had closed behind him and his 
 wheels were dying away down the drive, but Stowell continued 
 to stand in the hall, candle in hand and stiff as a statue. At 
 length he returned to the dining-room, put the candle on the table 
 and sat before the empty hearth. 
 
 It was all over ! The plan he had made for himself was im- 
 possible. There could be no resigning in secret and stealing 
 ajway from the island. 
 
 He had done harm to something. He had done harm to Jus- 
 tice. If Justice fell down what stood up? The man who took 
 the law into his own hands was a criminal, and as a criminal he 
 ought to be punished. 
 
 Punished? The shock was terrible. Was he then to give 
 himself up? To confess publicly? 
 
 He saw himself pleading guilty to having broken prison. He 
 heard the whole wretched tale of his relation to the unhappy 
 prisoner, and of his trying and condemning her, coming out in 
 
384 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 open Court. He heard the howls of execration from the people 
 who had hitherto loved and cheered him. 
 
 " Is there no other way? " he asked himself. 
 
 He saw himself in prison, in prison clothes, in the prison cell, 
 on the prison bed. Above all he saw another Deemster going 
 upstairs to sit on the bench while he lay in the vaults below. 
 
 He thought of his father and his family — four hundred years 
 of the Ballamoars and not a stain on the name of one of them 
 until now. He thought of Fenella — the cruel shame he would 
 bring on her. Granted he was guilty, and deserved punishment, 
 had he any right to punish Fenella also? 
 
 The clock on the landing struck one. An owl shrieked in the 
 plantation. He got up and strode about the room. The impulses 
 of the natural man began to fight for safety. 
 
 " Good God, what am I thinking about? " he asked himself. 
 
 What had he done to deserve all this? He had broken a 
 wicked law which had no right to exist, but did that require that he 
 should denounce himself, go to prison, degrade his father's name, 
 break Fenella's heart and put himself up on a gibbet for every 
 passer-by to jeer at and spit upon? 
 
 " What madness ! What rank madness ! " 
 
 He thought of the thousands of " great " men in all ages of 
 the world who had broken bad laws, and yet lived in honour and 
 died in glory. Why should he suffer for doing the same thing? 
 Why he and not the others ? He laughed in scorn of his own weak- 
 ness, but at the next moment a mocking voice within him seemed 
 to say, 
 
 " Go on ! Go on ! Issue that warrant ! Let the unhappy girl 
 who trusted you be brought back and executed. Let the friend 
 who loved you be arrested and tried and sent to jail for the crime 
 you have committed. Go through all that duplicity again. Let 
 the whole community be submerged in anarchy as the consequence 
 of your sin. But remember, when you come out of it all, you will 
 be a devil, and your soul will be damned." 
 
 That terrified him and he sat down by the empty hearth once 
 more. After a while he found his hands wet under his face. He 
 heard a soft, caressing voice pleading with him, 
 
 " Victor, my darling heart ! Resist this great temptation and 
 peace wiU come to you. Do the right, and no matter how low you 
 may fall in the eyes of men, you will look upon the face of God." 
 
 It was Fenella's voice — he was sure of that. Across the moun- 
 tain and through the darkness of the night her pure soul was 
 speaking to him. 
 
" SE DROVE OUT THE MAN " 385 
 
 The candle had burnt to the socket by this time, but a new light 
 came to him. For more than a year he had been a slave, dragging 
 a chain of sin behind him. At every step in his wrong-doing his 
 chain had lengthened. He must break it and be free. 
 
 " Yes, I will go up to Government House in the morning," he 
 thought, " confess everything and take my punishment." 
 
 It was only right, only just. And when the cruel thought 
 came that the next time he entered the court-house it would be to 
 stand in the dock, with the dread certainty of his doom, he told 
 himself that that would be right too — the Judge also must 
 be judged. 
 
 II 
 
 Groping his way upstairs in the darkness he entered his bed- 
 room and locked the door behind him. He found a fire burning, 
 the sofa drawn up in front of it, a lamp burning on the bureau 
 that stood at one side, and at the other the high-backed arm-chair 
 in which his father used to undress for bed. He was surprised to 
 see that the fire had been newly made up, but hearing footsteps 
 in the adjoining bedroom he understood. 
 
 " Poor Janet! " he thought. 
 
 His thoughts were thundering through his brain like waves in 
 a deep cavern. He was convinced that he would never survive the 
 ordeal that was before him. When men lived through long im- 
 prisonments it was because they had hope that the beautiful days 
 would come again. He had no such hope, so, sitting at his bureau, 
 he began to sort and arrange his papers like one who was going 
 away on a long journey. 
 
 After that he wrote a letter to the Attorney-General: 
 
 " Dear Master, — When this letter comes to your hand 
 you will know the occasion for it. I am aware that it cannot 
 have the authority of a will, but (in the absence of a more 
 regular document) I trust the Clerk of the Rolls may find a 
 way to act upon it as an expression of my last wishes. 
 
 " I desire that Janet Curphey should be suitably pro- 
 vided for as long as she lives. She has been a mother to me 
 all my life, the only mother I have ever known. 
 
 " I desire that Mrs. CoUister of Baldromma may have 
 such a provision made for her as will liberate her from the 
 tyrannies of her husband. 
 
 "I desire that Thomas Vondy, formerly the jailer at 
 Castle Rushen, should be taken care of in any way you may 
 consider best. 
 25 
 
386 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Finally, if I do not live to return home, I desire that 
 everything else of which I die possessed should be offered to 
 Fenella Stanley as a mark of my deep love and devotion. 
 
 " I think that is all." 
 
 Having signed, sealed and inscribed his letter he put it in his 
 breast pocket. Then taking a drawer out of the bureau he carried 
 it to' the sofa, intending to destroy the contents of it. 
 
 Tjhe first thing that came to his hand was the letter which Alick 
 Gell had given him at Derby Haven. It was marked " To be 
 opened after we have gone," and turned out to be a memorandum 
 to his father's executors, telling them he was leaving the island 
 with no intention of returning to it, and asking (as his only re- 
 quest) that in the event of an inheritance becoming due to him, 
 seven hundred pounds, which had been advanced to him at various 
 times, should be repaid to Deemster Victor Stowell — " the best 
 friend man ever had." 
 
 Feeling a certain twinge, Stowell hesitated for a moment, with 
 the memorandum shaking in his hand, and then threw it into 
 the fire. 
 
 There were other papers of the same kind (I O U's and the 
 like) which shared the same fate, and then up from the bottom 
 of the drawer, came a leather-bound book. It was " Isobel's 
 Diary." He had decided to destroy that also. As the sanctuary 
 of his father's soul he could not allow it to be looked into by 
 other eyes. 
 
 But, never having looked at it himself since the night of his 
 father's death, he could not resist the temptation to glance through 
 it once more before committing it to the flames. It fell open at 
 the page which said, 
 
 " So it's all well at last, Isobel. Your son can do with- 
 out me now. He needs his father no longer. With that 
 brave woman by his side he will go up and up. They vrill 
 marry and carry on the traditions of the Ballamoars. It is 
 the dearest wish of my heart that they should do so." 
 
 His throat throbbed. Ah, those^hopes, all wrecked and dead ! 
 Going down on one knee before the fire, and holding the book on 
 the other, he tore out page by page and burnt it, feeling as if he 
 were burning his right hand also. He was afraid of tears and 
 had rarely given way to them, but he was weeping like a heart- 
 broken woman before the last page had been consumed. 
 
 Then, taking Fenella's letters from his pocket-book, he pre- 
 pared to burn them too. They brought a faint perfume, a feeling 
 
"HE DROVE OUT THE MAN" 387 
 
 of warmth, a sense of her physical presence. Most of them were 
 notes of no consequence — appointments to ride, drive, fish, skate, 
 all touched by her gay raillery (" eight o'clock in the morning — is 
 that too early for you, Victor, dear? ") — he had preserved every 
 scrap in her hand-writing. But one was the letter she wrote to 
 him when he was in London, and with palpitating tenderness he 
 held it under the lamp to read it again: 
 
 " Victor, when I think of the life that is so surely before 
 you, and that I shall walk through it by your side, perfectly 
 united with you, sharing the same hopes and aims and 
 desires, enjoying the same sunshine and weathering the same 
 storms, I have a vision of happiness that makes me cry 
 with joy." 
 
 His heart swelled like a troubled sea, and to conquer his emo- 
 tion he thrust the letter hurriedly into the flames. But before it 
 was more than scorched he snatched it back and was preparing to 
 return it to his pocket when he bethought himself how soon it 
 must pass into other hands with everything he carried about him. 
 And then, turning his head away, and feeling as if he were burn- 
 ing his heart also, he put it into the fire. 
 
 After that he dropped back on to the sofa with feelings about 
 Fenella that found no relief in tears. One by one the joyous hours 
 of their love returned to his memory. They seemed to ring in 
 his ears with the melancholy sound of far-off bells. It was a 
 cruel pleasure. 
 
 All at once came a moment of fierce rebellion. When he had 
 told himself downstairs that in making the great renunciation of 
 his public ofiice he must renounce Fenella also he had not realised 
 what it meant. It meant that never again, for as long as he lived 
 (Fenella being impossible to him), would Woman take any part 
 in his existence. 
 
 A cold fear took possession of him at that thoughts He was 
 a man — was he for the rest of his life, if he survived his imprison- 
 ment, to be cut off from his kind, separated, alone ? 
 
 Better be dead than live such a life ! 
 
 Then another and still more startling thought came to him — 
 why not.'' A letter to the Governor, exonerating Gell, and then it 
 would all be over. No warrant! No trial! Why not? 
 
 Outside the night was dark. Not a breath of wind' was stir- 
 ring. In the silence of earth and sky he could hear the " swish, 
 swish " of the sea on the shingle at the top of the shore. It 
 must be high water. 
 
388 THE MASTER OF MAX 
 
 "Why not? Why not?" 
 
 His head was dizzy. He was thinking of a boat that lay 
 among the lush grass on the sandy bank above the beach. Alick 
 and he had often gone fishing in her. She was heavy, but he was 
 strong — ^he could push her into the water. 
 
 He saw himself pulling out to sea, far out, beyond the Point, 
 to where the Gulf Stream in its long race round half the world 
 swept by the island to the coast of Iceland. And then, as the 
 dawn broke in the eastern heavens, he saw himself scuttling the 
 boat and going down with her. 
 
 No one would know. The boat would lie at the bottom of the 
 sea imtil she fell to pieces, and he — ^he would go north on the way 
 of the great waters until he came to the feet of the frozen JokuUs, 
 where nobody would be able to say who he was or where he 
 came from. 
 
 No scandal ! No outcry ! No vulgar sensation ! Just a pang 
 to Fenella, and then the darkness of death over all. 
 
 Thinking the lamp was burning low he was reaching out his 
 hand to turn up the wick when a sense came of somebody being in 
 the room with him. He looked round. All was silent. 
 
 " Is anybody there? " he asked aloud. 
 
 There was no answer. The dread of miscarrying for ever if 
 he died by his own act began to struggle on the battle field of his 
 soul with the fear of being cut off from the living who live in 
 God's peace. He shivered and was trying to rise when again he 
 had the sense of somebody else in the bedroom. 
 
 "Who is it?" 
 
 At the next moment, raising his eyes, he thought he saw his 
 father in the arm-chair where he had seen him so often. The 
 august face was the same as when he saw it last in that room, 
 except that the melancholy eyes were now open. 
 
 " I'm ill," he thought, and he closed his eyes and put his hand 
 over them. 
 
 But when he opened his eyes again his father was still there, 
 looking at him with tenderness and compassion. His brain reeled 
 and he fell face down on the cushions of the sofa. 
 
 Then he heard his father speaking to him, gently, affection- 
 ately, but firmly, just as he used to do when he was alive. 
 
 " My son ! My dear son ! I know what you are thinking of 
 doing, and I warn you not to do it. No man can run away from 
 the consequences of his sins. If he flies from them in this life 
 he must meet them in the life hereafter, and then it will be a 
 hundred-fold more terrible to be swept from the face of the 
 living God." 
 
THE DAWN OF MORNING 389 
 
 " Father ! " 
 
 Stowell tried to cry aloud but could not. His father's voice 
 ceased and at the next moment a vision flashed before him. A 
 line of miserable-looking men were standing before an awful 
 tribunal. He knew who they were — ^the unjust judges of the 
 world who had corrupted justice. All the grandeur in which they 
 had clothed themselves on earth was gone, and they were there in 
 the nakedness of their shame crying, 
 
 " Mercy ! Mercy ! Mercy ! " 
 
 Stowell felt as if he were falling off the world into a void of 
 unfathomable night. Then blindness fell upon the eyes of his 
 mind and he knew no more. 
 
 CHAPTER FORTY-THREE 
 
 THE DAWN OP MORNING 
 
 "Victor! Victor!" 
 
 It was Janet's voice outside the door. 
 
 " Eh? " 
 
 " Six o'clock. Didn't you want to catch the first train t« 
 town, dear.'' " 
 
 " Oh yes ! All right. I'll be down presently." 
 
 Stowell foimd it difficult to recover consciousness. He was 
 lying on the sofa, and he looked around. There was the arm- 
 chair — it was empty. But the lamp on the bureau was still burn- 
 ing. He must have slept, for he was feeling refreshed and 
 even strong. 
 
 Leaping to his feet he blew out the lamp and pulled back the 
 window curtains. It was a beautiful morning, tranquil as the 
 sky and noiseless as the dew. Over the tops of the tall trees the 
 bald crown of old Snaefell was bathed in sunshine. 
 
 He was like another man. Life had no terrors for him now. 
 It was just as if a curse had fallen from him in the night. No 
 more visions ! No more spectres ! He loiew what he had to do 
 and he would do it. He had a sense of immense emancipation. 
 He felt like a slave who had broken the chain which he had 
 dragged after him for years. He was a free man once more. 
 
 Throwing off coat and waistcoat he washed — lashing the cold 
 water over face and head and neck as if he were diving into one of 
 the dubs in the glen — and then went downstairs with a strong step. 
 
 Breakfast was not quite ready, so he stepped out over the 
 piazza to the farm-yard. The cheerful place was full of its morn- 
 ing activities. Cows were mooing their way to the grass of the 
 
390 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 fields before barking dogs, and milkmaids were carrying their 
 frothing pails across to the dairy. 
 
 He saluted everybody he came upon. " Good-morning, 
 Betty!" 
 
 " Good-morning, Mary ! " The girls smiled and looked proud, 
 but they said afterwards that the yoimg master's voice sounded 
 as if he were saying good-bye to them. 
 
 Unconsciously he was going about like one who was taking a 
 last look round before setting out on a long journey. He went 
 into the stable, and Molly, his young chestnut mare, turned her 
 head and neighed at him. He went into the empty cow-house, and 
 four young calves in boxes licked, with their long moist tongues, 
 the hand he held down to them. 
 
 On the way back to the house he met Robbie Creer, who was 
 fuU of another story of Mrs. CoUister of Baldromma. She had 
 taken the ground with the ebb tide, poor woman. They had put 
 her into the asylum. The doctors said her case was incurable. 
 She was always saying the old Dempster had come from the dead 
 to take her Bessie out of prison. 
 
 " But what a blessed end," said Stowell. " She'll think her 
 daughter is in heaven, so she'll always be happy." 
 
 " It's like she will. Sir," said Robbie, looking puzzled, and 
 going indoors for his morning bowl of porridge he said to his wife, 
 
 " A mortal quare thing to say, though, and the woman in 
 the madhouse." 
 
 Stowell ate with an appetite (Janet plying him with coffee and 
 eggs and toasted muffins), and then young Robbie brought round 
 the dog-cart. Janet helped him on with his light loose overcoat and 
 went to the door with him. 
 
 He paused there, puUing on his driving-gloves and thinking 
 what cruel pain the dear soul would suffer when she heard that 
 night what he had done during the day. At last he threw his arms 
 about her and kissed her, saying with a gulp, 
 
 " Good-bye, mother ! God bless you ! " 
 
 And then he sprang up into the cart, snatched at the reins, 
 pulled them taut, and (after the young mare had leapt on her fore- 
 legs) darted away. 
 
 As he approached the turn of the drive where the house was 
 hidden by the trees he turned and looked back at it — ^what a home 
 to lose ! 
 
 Janet, who was still at the porch, smoothing her silvery hair, 
 thought he had looked back at her, and she waved her hand to him. 
 Nobody had said a word to her, yet she knew he had been suffering 
 as a result of some terrible wrong-doing. She thought she knew 
 
THE DAWN OF MORNING 391 
 
 what it was, too, and she had wept bitter tears over it. But he 
 had not a fault in her eyes now. 
 
 Her boy ! Hers all the way up since he was a child and used 
 to run about the lawn in pinafores. Heaven bless him ! He was 
 the best 'thing God had ever made. 
 
 II 
 
 The train to town was full to overflowing. The northside 
 people, having heard of yesterday's doings, were going up to see 
 for themselves " what them toots in Douglas " were doing. 
 
 In spite of the guard's deferential protests Stowell stepped 
 into an open third-class carriage. It had been humming like a 
 beehive imtil then, but except for a general salutation it became 
 silent when he entered. 
 
 A draper's assistant who sat opposite handed him an English 
 newspaper, two days old, with an article on the escape from Castle 
 Rushen. The incident was a disgrace to the insular administra- 
 tion, and if the Governor could not offer a satisfactory explanation 
 the sooner the island's Home Rule came to an end the better 
 for Justice. 
 
 One or two of the passengers tried to draw Stowell into con- 
 versation about the article, but he said little or nothing. Then 
 some black-coated persons (well-to-do farmers and the like) gave 
 the talk another turn. 
 
 " Still and for all," said one, " that doesn't justify such doings 
 as there are in Douglas!" "Chut!" said another. "It isn't 
 justice the agitators are wanting, it's robbery." " Truth enough," 
 said a third, " it's the land they're after, and if the Governor 
 isn't doing something soon, there'll be not an acre left at the one 
 of us." " Give them a pig of their own sow," said a fat farmer. 
 " Men like Qualtrough and Baldromma ought to be taken to 
 say and dropped overboard." 
 
 Again the passengers tried to draw Stowell into conversation, 
 and when they found they could not get him to speak to them 
 they spoke at him. 
 
 " Where's the big men of the island that they're not telling 
 the people they're bringing it to wreck and ruin? " 
 
 " When a man is claver — claver uncommon — and mighty with 
 the tongue, he ought to be showing the ignorant gommerals the 
 way they're going." 
 
 " Yes," said a little man (he was a local preacher), " when 
 a man has the gift it's his duty to the Lord to use it." 
 
 " He must be a right man though," said the fat farmer, 
 
392 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " straight as a mast himself, same as some we've had at Balla- 
 moar in the good ould days gone by." 
 
 There was silence for a moment after this, and then an old man 
 by the opposite window was heard to whisper, 
 
 " Lave him alone, men; he knows what hour the clock is 
 striking." 
 
 When the train reached Douglas, Stowell went off with a 
 heavy face. It was remarked that he had not shaken hands — ^his 
 father used to shake hands with everybody. 
 
 " He's his father's son for all," said the old man by the window. 
 
 Stowell took the cable-car at the bottom of the Prospect Hill 
 which is at the foot of the town. Douglas was still in a state of 
 agitation and the driver had as much as he could do to forge 
 his way, without accidents, through the tumultuous throngs in 
 the thoroughfare. 
 
 A cordon of red-coated soldiers from Castletown surrounded 
 Government office, and a noisy crowd (including women with 
 children) were jeering at them from the middle of the street, and 
 shouting up at the windows, under the impression that the Gover- 
 nor was within. 
 
 The shops bore signs of yesterday's rioting — -many having 
 their shutters up, while the windows of others were barricaded with 
 new boarding. 
 
 Stowell got out of the car at the terminus and made the rest of 
 his journey afoot. At the top of the hill, where the road turns 
 towards the Governor's house, he came upon a mass meeting. 
 From a horseless lorry, decorated with banners, a burly old ruffian 
 with shaggy grey hair (Qualtrough, M.H.K.) was speaking in a 
 voice of thunder, while, on the cross-seat by his side, Dan Bal- 
 dromma was sitting with the air of a martyr. 
 
 " There's a man on this platform who has gone to prison for 
 his principles. That's what Justice in the Isle of Man is. And 
 that's what they would like to be doing with the lot of ye, the big 
 ones of the island. But, gentlemen and ladies, their rotten ould 
 ship is floating on the pumps and she'll soon be sinking." 
 
 When Stowell reached the Governor's gate he paused, being out 
 of breath and not so strong as he had imagined. From that point 
 he could see a broad stretch of the coast, as well as the shadowy 
 outlines of the English hills on the other side of the channel. A 
 steamer was sailing into the bay. Perhaps she was bringing the 
 English cavalry the Governor had sent for. 
 
 Life is sweet when death is at the door. At that last moment, 
 although he had thought his mind was made up, Stowell found that 
 his heart was failing him. Must he go on? Deliberately destroy 
 
" QOD GAVE HIM DOMINION " 393 
 
 himself? No outside power compelling him? The world was 
 wide — ^why not leave all this wreck and ruin behind him and in 
 some other country begin life anew? 
 
 The moment of weakness passed and he went on. Half way 
 up the drive, where the trees broke clear and the long white facade 
 of Government House became visible, he dropped his head. He 
 was thinking of the last time he had been there and remembering 
 again the stinging words with which Fenella had driven him away. 
 But there was strength in the thought that he was about to break 
 the chain which he had dragged after him so long, and save his 
 people at the same time. 
 
 When the maid opened the door, he asked for the Governor. 
 
 " Yes, your Honour," said the maid, " but Miss Fenella wishes 
 to see you first, Sir." 
 
 His heart was beating hard when he stepped into the house. 
 
 CHAPTER FOETY-FOUR 
 
 " GOD GAVE HIM DOMINION " 
 
 Three times during breakfast that morning Fenella had seen 
 somebody coming up the drive. The first to come was the Major 
 from Castletown, riding at a fast trot. On being shown into the 
 breakfast-room, with spurs clanking, he told the Governor 
 that a mob had gathered about Government Office and were 
 very threatening. 
 
 " Tell the Mayor to read the Riot Act, and then do what is 
 necessary for the protection of life and property," said the 
 Governor. 
 
 The second to come was the Chief Constable, driving rapidly in 
 a hackney carriage. On entering the room with his heavy step, he 
 said the steamer from England was in sight and the soldiers would 
 be landed at the pier within half an hour. 
 
 " If the thoroughfares are still thronged with riotous mobs 
 at that time," said the Governor, "tell the cavalry to ride 
 through them." 
 
 The last to come up the drive was a solitary man afoot, walking 
 slowly and pausing at intervals as if his strength had failed him. 
 
 Fenella knew who it was, and rising hastily from the table she 
 went into the drawing-room. 
 
 When Stowell was brought in to her she was shocked at the 
 change in his appearance. He looked ten years older. His dark 
 hair had become white about the temples and his eyes were full of 
 a strange light. 
 
394 TEE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " How he must have suffered," she thought, and an almost 
 overpowering desire took possession of her to put her arms about 
 him and comfort him. 
 
 He looked at her and the same thought and the same impulse 
 came to him. But they were afraid of each other, and with the 
 surging ocean of their love between them they stood apart, but 
 trembling. At length, trying not to look into each other's faces, 
 they began to speak. 
 
 "Fenella!" 
 
 "Victor!" 
 
 " You know why I have been sent for.^ " 
 
 " Yes, and that is why I want to speak to you before you see 
 my father. There are things you ought to know." 
 
 "Yes.?" 
 
 " Mr. Vondy, the jailer from Castle Eushen, was here two 
 days ago, to be examined by the Governor, the Attorney-General 
 and the Chief Constable." 
 
 " Did he say anything? " 
 
 " Not to them." 
 
 " To you, perhaps ? " 
 
 " Yes. I brought him in here. He told me what occurred 
 after I left the Castle." 
 
 " Then you know? " 
 
 She dropped her head and answered " Yes." 
 
 " I had to do it, Fenella — I thought I had to." 
 
 A moment passed. 
 
 " He asked me to tell you that he would keep his word to you, 
 whatever happened." 
 
 "Did he say that? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 A spaism in Stowell's throat seemed to be stifling him. 
 
 " I did wrong, Fenella, terribly wrong, but there is one thing 
 I will ask of you." 
 
 "What is it, Victor?" 
 
 " Not to judge me until you know what I've come to do to-day." 
 
 Fenella, deeply affected, thought she caught a glimpse of 
 his meaning. 
 
 " Do you intend to resign, Victor? " 
 
 " Yes, but that is not all." 
 
 " What is, Victor ? " She was thinking of his exile, his pos- 
 sible banishment. 
 
 " Perhaps I am speaking to you for the last time, Fenella. 
 That's why I am glad you have given me this opportunity of 
 seeing you." 
 
" aOD OAVE BIM DOMINION " 395 
 
 She trembled, thinking he meant suicide, and said in a 
 choking voice, 
 
 " You don't mean that you intend to take your .... No, no, 
 that is impossible. Think of your father." 
 
 Stowell did not speak for a moment. Then he said, 
 
 " I saw him last night, Fenella." 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " My father. I was thinking of that as a way out of all this 
 miserable wrong-doing, when he came to warn me." 
 
 " How he must have suffered," thought Fenella. 
 
 " But perhaps you think it was only a delusion ? " 
 
 " Indeed no ! If the spirits of our dear ones may not come 
 back to speak to us in our times of temptation . . . . " 
 
 " But my father was not the only one who spoke to me last 
 night, Fenella." 
 
 " Who else did, Victor.? " 
 
 " You. I heard you as plainly as I hear you now." 
 
 Fenella's bosom was heaving. " When was that ? " she asked. 
 
 " In the middle of the night. But perhaps you were in bed 
 and asleep at that time." 
 
 " No .... no, I did not sleep until after daybreak. In the 
 middle of the night I was " . . . . (she was breathing audibly) 
 " I was praying." 
 
 He looked up at her with his heavy eyes. 
 
 " Were you praying for me, Fenella ? " 
 
 She cast down her eyes and answered " Yes." 
 
 Another moment passed, and then in a husky voice 'he said, 
 
 " Fenella, what did you pray for for me ? " 
 
 " That you might have strength to do what was right, what- 
 ever it might cost you." 
 
 He reached forward and grasped her hands. 
 
 " Did you know what that meant, Fenella — ^whatever it might 
 cost me? " 
 
 " Yes," she said, raising her eyes, " and at length an answer 
 came to me." 
 
 " What answer ? " 
 
 " That if you did, and made atonement, however low you 
 might fall in the eyes of men you would look upon the face 
 of God." 
 
 Stowell gasped, dropped her hands and for a while was speech- 
 less. Then he said, 
 
 " And do you think I will? " 
 
 " I am sure you will, Victor. I had a sign from God." 
 
398 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Do you, after all, believe in God, FeneUa ? " 
 
 " Indeed yes. And you — don't you ? ? " 
 
 " My father did. He used to kneel by his bed like a little 
 child every night and every morning." 
 
 She saw that he did not speak for himself, and a great wave 
 of love and compassion for the sin-laden man stormed her heart. 
 
 " Victor," she said, tears springing to her eyes, " you must try 
 to forgive me. I've not been what I ought to have been to you — I 
 see that now. Whatever you have done I should have clung to 
 you, not driven you away from me, and let you go on from sin to 
 sin, doubting Giod's mercy and forgiveness. Let me do so now. 
 We belong to each other, Victor. There can never be anybody 
 else for either of us as long as we live. Let us go together." 
 
 She had seized his hands. The hands of both were trembling. 
 
 " Would to God you could, FeneUa. But it is too late for that 
 now. I have gone too far for you to follow me. Where I go 
 now I must go alone." 
 
 " Don't say that." 
 
 " Wait until I have seen your father." 
 
 At that moment the maid came into the room to tell the 
 Deemster that the Governor, having heard that he was in the 
 house, wished to see him immediately. 
 
 Stowell was turning to go, when FeneUa put a trembling hand 
 on his shoulder and said in a whisper, 
 
 " Victor, wihatever happens with my father, promise me that 
 you wiU never do that." 
 
 " But if the Governor . . . . " 
 
 " Never mind about the Governor now, promise me." 
 
 There was a moment of silence and then he said, " I promise " 
 and with head down passed out of the room. 
 
 Being alone, FeneUa tried in vain to compose herself. The 
 fear that Stowell might kill himself (as a result of the public 
 exposure and humiliation which the Governor would impose upon 
 him) threw her into violent agitation. 
 
 Ubable to support the strain of her anxiety she could not resist 
 the temptation to listen at the door of her father's room. She 
 heard the two voices within — Stowell's in tones of pitiful suppli- 
 cation, her father's in accents of fierce expostulation. At length 
 she heard her own name mentioned and then she could contain 
 (herself no longer. 
 
 Opening the door noiselessly she entered the room. The two 
 men were face to face, looking at each other with flaming eyes. 
 
' aOD QAVE HIM DOMINION " 397 
 
 II 
 
 " Come in, Stowell. I'm glad you're early. I wanted a word 
 with you before the others arrived. Sit down." 
 
 The Governor too was violently agitated. He was striding 
 about the room. His grey hair, usually brushed down with military 
 precision, was loose and disordered, as if he had been running his 
 hands through it, and his pipe, still alight and as if forgotten, 
 was smoking on the arm of his chair. 
 
 " You came by train.'' " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then you saw the soldiers. I had to do it. I couldn't 
 allow this raggabash to take possession of the island. There may 
 be casualties, but the shortest way is the most merciful — that's 
 my experience. Sit down. Why don't you sit down? " 
 
 But the Governor went on walking and Stowell continued 
 to stand. 
 
 " They say this rioting is the sequel to the escape from Castle 
 Eushen. Only an excuse, of course, but that makes no difference. 
 If we are to justify our administration of Justice in the eyes of 
 the authorities across the water we must re-capture those runaways. 
 The man — the guilty man in particular — must be locked up in 
 prison. The Attorney and the Colonel will be here presently. 
 You'll be able to help them to the personal description they want — 
 nobody better — ^and then issue the warrant." 
 
 Stowell, who had been clutching the back of a chair behind 
 which he was standing with a fixed stare, said in a quivering voice, 
 
 " I'm sorry, your Excellency. I cannot do that." 
 
 " Eh? Cannot do what? " 
 
 " I cannot issue the warrant for the arrest of Alick Gell for 
 breaking prison because . . . . " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 Stowell swallowed something in his throat and continued 
 . . . . " because I did it." 
 
 The Governor drew up sharply and said, 
 
 " What's the matter with you ? Are you ill ? " 
 
 Stowell, who had recovered himself, answered, 
 
 " No, I am not ill, your Excellency." 
 
 " Then you must be mad — stark mad. It's impossible. You 
 can never have done such a thing." 
 
 " I am not mad either, Sir. What I tell you is the truth — it 
 is God's truth. Sir." 
 
 And then, excusing nothing, extenuating nothing, Stowell told 
 the Governor what he had done, and how he had done it. 
 
398 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " I used my official position to effect the escape of the prisoner, 
 and I arranged for her flight, with her companion, to a for- 
 eign country." 
 
 The Governor listened without drawing breath. 
 
 " But why .... why did you .... was it because I re- 
 fused to remit . . . . " 
 
 " No, I did it because I came to see that the law which per- 
 mitted you to order the execution of that girl was a crime, and that 
 a higher law called upon me to undo it." 
 
 " A crime? Good Lord, what if it was.? What had you to do 
 with that? " 
 
 " I had tried and condemned her. And besides, I had my per- 
 sonal reasons for wishing the prisoner to escape pimishment." 
 
 " But damn it all, man, when you were doing all this for the 
 girl, didn't you see what you were doing for yourself? " 
 
 " Not then. But now I see that in preventing the law from 
 committing a crime I committed a crime against the law, and am 
 no longer fit to be a Judge. That's why I'm here now. Sir — ^not 
 to issue that warrant, but to resign my judgeship." 
 
 " Resign your judgeship? " 
 
 " Yes, but that's not all — to ask you to order my arrest and 
 commit me to prison." 
 
 The Governor, who had been half stupefied, took possession of 
 himself at last. 
 
 " Commit you to prison? Good heavens, what are you saying? 
 A Deemster in prison ! Whoever heard of such a thing ! " 
 
 " I am guilty of a crime against Justice . . . . " began 
 Stowell, but the Governor bore him down. 
 
 " Tush ! I don't care for the moment whether you are or are 
 not. Neither do I care whether the law which condemned the 
 prisoner to death, was or was not a crime. What I have to deal 
 with is the present situation. You say you want me to order 
 your arrest — is that it? " 
 
 " Yes, you said yourself the guilty man ought to be in prison." 
 
 " But heavens alive, man, can't you see the disgrace ? Gell is 
 a private person, while you are a Judge, the Judge who tried and 
 condemned the prisoner. What is to happen to Justice in the 
 island if a Judge is condemned and imprisoned ? " 
 
 Stowell tried to speak, but again the Governor bore him down. 
 
 " Oh, I know what you'll say — you'll talk about your con- 
 science. But what is your conscience to me against the honour of 
 the public service and the welfare of the whole community? " 
 
 The honour of the public service cannot rest on a lie. Sir," said 
 Stowell. " It would be a living lie if I continued to be a Judge, 
 
" GOD GAVE HIM DOMINION " 399 
 
 and tihe only -way to save the island is to tell it the truth, no 
 matter what . . . . " 
 
 " Don't talk damned nonsense." 
 
 StoweU drew himself up. 
 
 " Do you wish me, then, to issue that warrant against Alick Gell 
 now that you know that I am myself the guilty man f " 
 
 The Governor flinched for a moment, then smote the top of his 
 desk and said, 
 
 " I know nothing of the kind. Sir, and don't want to know. 
 I believe you're mad — made mad by the ordeal you have lately 
 gone through. Nothing will make me believe the contrary." 
 
 There was silence after that for several minutes. Then the 
 Governor, who had thrown himself in his chair, said in a softer tone, 
 
 " Stowell, listen to me. I partly understand you. But even if 
 you did this unbelievable thing, and are satisfied you did it from 
 a good motive, why can't you hold your tongue about it.'' " 
 
 " I have thought of tihat. Sir," said StoweU, with a tremor in 
 his voice. " I have fought it all out with myself. Believe me I 
 would have given all I have in the world not to have had to come 
 here on this errand. But the life of a Judge would be impossible 
 to me with a lie like that for its foundation. My work cannot 
 be a mockery. Sir. I cannot allow another to suffer for what 
 I have done." 
 
 The Governor leapt up from his seat. 
 
 " You talk about others suffering for what you have done — 
 have you forgotten how many others must suffer if I allow you 
 to do what you want to do now? Think of your island — your 
 native island — do you want to cover it with dishonour.' Think 
 of your profession — do you want to load it with disgrace ? Think 
 of your father, who loved you as no father ever loved a son. We 
 put up his portrait in the court-house the other day — do you want 
 to pull it down? And then think of me — I suppose I ran some 
 risk when I recommended you for your position . . . . " 
 
 Stowell was trying to speak, but again the Governor put up 
 bis hand.. 
 
 " Oh, you needn't thank me. Perhaps I wasn't acting alto- 
 gether unselfishly. I may have been wanting somebody to stand 
 by me now that I'm growing old, somebody like your father — able 
 to fight these rascals who are trying to ruin everything. And 
 wthen you came along, you whom I had known since you were a boy, 
 the son of my old friend, who was to be my son some day . . . . " 
 
 The Governor, startled by the emotion that was coming over 
 him, broke away and crossed the room, saying. 
 
400 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 "But damn it all, why need I talk of myself? There's 
 Fenella — have you forgotten Fenella? '' 
 
 It was at this moment that Fenella entered the room. Neither 
 of the men saw her. She stood noiselessly at the door. 
 
 " If I do what you want, order your arrest, what's the first 
 question the Court will ask you — why did you help the prisoner 
 to escape.'' Then the whole wretched story of your relations with 
 the girl Collister will come out. And what wiU be the result? 
 Fenella's name will become a byword. It will be the common talk 
 of every slut in the island that she came second after your woman 
 .... your offal." 
 
 Stowell flamed up with anger for a moment, and then choked 
 with tears. After a short silence he said, 
 
 " I can never be sufficiently grateful to you. Sir, for what 
 you've done for me. As for Fenella, I can hardly trust myself to 
 (speak. The thought of her suffering is the bitterest part of my 
 own. I would live out the rest of my life on my knees if I could 
 undo the wrong I have done her. But I cannot bring her down 
 with me. I cannot take up again my life as a Judge after it has 
 been so hideously disfigured and ask her to share it. Let me 
 go to prison . . . . " 
 
 Sobbing in his throat Stowell could go no further. Fenella, 
 sobbing in her heart, crept noiselessly out of the room. 
 
 The Governor, in spite of himself, was visibly affected. 
 
 " Look here, my boy," he said. " I'll tell you what I'll do. 
 It's going far, perhaps too far for the safety of the public service, 
 but to prevent worse things happening I'll take the risk. I'll stop 
 that warrant and hush up this miserable scandal on one condition 
 — ^that you say nothing, take leave of absence on grounds of 
 ill-health, go abroad and never come back again." 
 
 Stowell shook his head. 
 
 " Why not? Good gracious, why not? The guilty ones have 
 gone. Your secret is safe. Except ourselves, nobody knows it. 
 Why shouldn't you? " 
 
 " I dare not," said Stowell. 
 
 "Dare not?" 
 
 " I have committed a crime. If I do not pay for it in this 
 life I must do so hereafter. Therefore I ask for my punish- 
 ment nOTB." 
 
 The Governor got the better of his emotion. 
 
 " So you wish to resign your office and ask me to order your 
 arrest? Well, I won't do it. I am' the only authority to whom 
 you can resign and I decline to accept your resignation — I refuse 
 to transmit it to the Home Authorities. What you wish to do 
 
" GOD OAVE HIM DOMINION " 401 
 
 would undermine the stability of law and the authority of Gov- 
 ernment. It would humiliate me and destroy my daughter's hap- 
 piness. Therefore I not only refuse to receive your resignation, 
 I forbid it." 
 
 Stowell hesitated for a moment and then said, 
 
 " In that case, your Excellency, you will force me to denounce 
 myself." 
 
 " Denounce . . . . ? You mean in open Court.'' " 
 
 " Yes, it will be my duty, and I shall be compelled to do it." 
 
 The Governor's wrath became rage. With a ring of sarcasm 
 in his voice he said, 
 
 " Very well ! Very well ! I cannot prevent you. Denounce 
 yourself in open Court if you are so unwise, so insane. But under- 
 stand — if you are compelled to do your duty, / shall be compelled 
 to do mine also. After you have made your public confession and 
 the Courts have dealt with you, I shall issue the warrant just the 
 same. You say the fugitives have gone to a foreign country, but 
 no foreign country will refuse to give up a condemned murderess. 
 The woman shall be brought back and executed according to the 
 sentence you pronounced upon her. More than that, your friend, 
 your confederate, shall be brought back also, and dealt with 
 according to his crime. Therefore your public confession will be 
 of no avail. It will be an empty farce, ruining three lives that 
 might otherwise have been saved." 
 
 Stowell trembled, his lips became white. 
 
 " I beg you not to do that. Sir." 
 
 " I will ! I take God to witness that I will. Now choose for 
 yourself whidh it is to be — your course or mine.'' " 
 
 Stowell breathed hard for a moment and then smiled — ^but 
 such a smile ! 
 
 " Your Excellency," he said, " for your orvn sake I beg of you 
 not to do it." 
 
 " My sake ? " said the Governor, drawing up sharply — he had 
 been striding about the room again. 
 
 " Yes, yours," said Stowell. " One of those two was my vic- 
 tim, the other was merely the subject of my will. I alone am 
 guilty, and if I cannot meet my punishment without bringing such 
 consequences on the innocent I must meet something else." 
 
 "What else?" 
 
 " Death. Then, in the eyes of heaven, the crime against the 
 law will be your crime and I shall not live to witness it." 
 
 There was a breathless silence. The Governor was dumb- 
 founded. Stowell stepped towards the door and said in a low voice, 
 
 " God forgive you, Sir. You will never see me again." 
 26 
 
402 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 At that moment the maid entered the room to announce the 
 Attorney-General and the Ohief Constable^ who came in imme- 
 diately behind her. 
 
 " Ah, Victor, how are you ? " said the Attorney. " Your Ex- 
 cellency, we have brought the Warrant." 
 
 " And here," said the Chief Constable, with an obsequious 
 bow to Stowell, " is the Deemster ready to issue it." 
 
 Nobody spoke, and the Chief Constable, taking a paper out of 
 a long envelope, proceeded to read it : 
 
 " This is to command you to tvhom. this Warrant is addressed 
 forthwith to apprehend Alexander Gell . . . . " 
 
 " That will do. Give it to me," said the Governor. 
 
 When the Warrant had been given to him he tore it up and 
 threw it into the fire. The two men were aghast. 
 
 " Your Excellency, what .... what . . . . " 
 
 " This damnable thing must go no further. Let me hear no 
 more about it." 
 
 After saying this the Governor's strength seemed to leave him. 
 He dropped into a chair before the fire and gazed at the blaz- 
 ing paper. 
 
 Stowell's trembling hand was on the handle of the door. 
 
 " I thank you for what you've done. Sir," he said, " and wish 
 to God the matter could end there. But it cannot .... it 
 cannot." 
 
 He went out. The two men looked into each other's faces. A 
 flash of understanding passed between them, and, without a word 
 more, they stepped out of the room. 
 
 Meantime, Stowell, going down the corridor, felt a hand that 
 had been stretched out from the drawing-room, taking hold of his 
 arm and drawing him in. It was Fenella's. Her face was utterly 
 broken up. Flinging her arms about him she kissed him 
 passionately. 
 
 " Victor," she said, " do as your heart bids you. Don't think 
 of me any longer. I am with you in life or death. If you have 
 to go to prison I will go with you, and if .... " 
 
 Unable to say more she broke away from him and hurried into 
 an inner room. 
 
 The front door rang as Stowell pulled it after him, and when 
 he walked down the drive with a high step his head was up and 
 his ravished face aglow. 
 
 END OF 6IZTH BOOK 
 
SEVENTH BOOK 
 THE RESURRECTION 
 
 CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE 
 
 THE WAY OP THE CROSS 
 
 There had been wild doings in Douglas since the Chief Con- 
 stable's visit to Government House. Stones had been thrown and 
 windows broken. At length the Mayor, not without personal risk, 
 had read the Riot Act from the steps of the Town Hall. 
 
 • The result had been the reverse of what the Governor ex- 
 pected. The police, a small force, had charged the mob with their 
 batons, but they had soon been overpowered. Then the soldiers 
 from Castletown, a little company of eighty, had attempted to 
 intimidate the crowd with their rifles, but twice as many stalwart 
 fishermen, coming up behind, had disarmed them. After that the 
 people had surged through the streets in delirious triumph. 
 
 At ten o'clock the throng was densest outside Government 
 OflSce, which stands midway on the steep declivity of the Prospect 
 Hill. The police and the soldiers had as much as they could do 
 to guard the doors of the building. The space in front of it was 
 packed with people of both sexes and all ages. They were squirm- 
 ing about like worms on an upturned sod. There were loud 
 shouts and derisive cries. 
 
 " Down with the Governor ! " 
 
 " Tell him the steamer leaves for England at nine in 
 the morning." 
 
 Suddenly, with the rapidity of a desert wind, word went 
 through the crowd that mounted soldiers from England had just 
 been landed at the pier, and were riding up the principal thorough- 
 fares, driving everything before them. 
 
 A cold fear came, culminating in terror. Presently the 
 cavalry were seen to turn the bottom of the hill. They were 
 swinging the flats of their swords to scatter the crowd. The people 
 screamed and ran in frantic haste to the parapets on either side 
 of the street. In a moment the broad space in front of Govern- 
 ment Office was clear. 
 
 Clear, save for one tiny object. It was a child, a little girl 
 of four, who had been clinging to her mother's skirts and in the 
 ^ramble had lost her hold of them. 
 
 403 
 
404 TBE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 The cavalry were now coming up the hill at a gallop and 
 the little one's danger was seen by all. 
 
 " Save the child," people shouted, and more than one ran out 
 a few paces and then ran back, for the horses seemed to be almost 
 upon them. The mother was screaming and trying to break into 
 the open, but women were holding her back. 
 
 At that moment a man, whom nobody recognised at first, 
 pushed his way through the crowd with powerful arms, and 
 darted out in the direction of the child. 
 
 " Come back; you'll be killed," cried someone, but the others 
 held their breath. 
 
 At the next instant the man was lost to sight in the midst of 
 the cavalry. In the confused movement that followed one of the 
 horses was seen to rear and swing aside, as if it had been struck 
 in the mouth by a strong hand. 
 
 When the crowd were conscious of what happened next the 
 cavalry had galloped past, with its clang of hoofs and rattle of 
 steel, and the broad space was once more empty. 
 
 Empty save for the man. His head was bare, his hand was 
 bleeding, and the skirt of the loose overcoat he wore was torn as if 
 a sword had accidentally slashed it. But in his arms was the 
 child — unhurt and untouched. 
 
 Then the people saw who he was. He was the Deemster, and 
 they crowded about him. He gave the little one back to its 
 mother, who had a still younger child at her breast, and was too 
 breathless from fright to thank him. 
 
 He tried to conceal himself in the crowd, but they followed 
 him — down the hill to Athol Street, where the Court-house is — a 
 long train, chiefly of women and children, with wet eyes and open 
 mouths, crying to him and to each other, 
 
 " The Deemster ! God bless him ! " 
 
 They thought he was going to the Court-house to sit on the 
 bench as Judge, but when he came to the big portico he passed it, 
 and, turning down a side street, he stopped at a little black door 
 and knocked. 
 
 The door was opened by a police sergeant who was not wearing 
 his helmet. The Deemster stepped into the vault-like place 
 within and the door was closed behind him. 
 
 It was the Douglas prison. 
 
 II 
 
 The High Bailiff of Douglas held a Court that day. The 
 court-house was almost empty. Not more than six or seven per- 
 
THE WAY OF THE CEOSS 405 
 
 sons sat in the places assigned to the public. Three young re- 
 porters yawned over their note-books in their box beside the wall. 
 In the well allotted to Counsel there were only two advocates in 
 wig and gown. 
 
 A few bare-headed policemen stood near the bench and the 
 Clerk of the Court sat under it. There was nobody else in the 
 court-house except the High Bailiff himself^ an elderly man with 
 a red face and a benevolent expression. 
 
 He was trying a number of petty cases, chieily of larceny and 
 ((Jrunkenness. The light was low and the voices echoed in the 
 vacant chamber. But from time to time a deadened rumble came 
 from the streets outside — the clang of horses' hoofs, the derisive 
 cries of a crowd, the loud shout of a commanding officer, and 
 then a scamper of feet that was like heavy rain pelting down 
 on the pavement. » 
 
 Befhind the Jury-box, which was empty, there was a door that 
 led to the prison below. The last case was being heard when this 
 door was opened and the Chief Constable came up into Court, 
 followed by Stowell and a policeman. The Chief Constable tocdi 
 a seat in the advocates' well ; Stowell and the policeman sat on the 
 public benches. 
 
 AVhen the High Bailiff, who was a great respecter of author- 
 ity, saw the Deemster enter, he sent a policeman to ask him 
 to come up to a seat by his side on the bench, but Stowell shook 
 his head. 
 
 The case being tried was that of a farmer who was charged 
 with driving his country cart on the high road without a stern 
 light. The defence was that the lamp was alight when he left 
 town, and had been put out by a high wind that was blowing. 
 On this issue there was a long questioning and cross-questioning by 
 the advocates, but at length the case came to a close. 
 
 " Half-a-crovra and costs," said the High Bailiff; and then 
 reaching over to his clerk he asked if that was the last case for 
 the day. 
 
 " Yes, your Worship," said the Clerk, and the High Bailiff 
 was pushing back his chair, when the Chief Constable rose with 
 an air of importance. 
 
 " Your Worship, I have a serious charge to make." 
 
 He beckoned to the policeman at the back, who opened the 
 door of the dock and Stowell stepped into it. 
 
 " I charge his Honour Deemster Victor Stowell, on his own 
 confession, with breaking prison on Sunday night last between the 
 hours of ten and twelve, to effect the escape from custody of a 
 prisoner lying there under sentence of death." 
 
406 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 The High BailiflF seemed to be stupefied and the charge had 
 to be repeated to him. 
 
 " Eh? What? God bless my soul! On his own confession, 
 you say ? Is the Deemster well ? What conceivable motive . . . . " 
 
 " I will give formal evidence, your Worship, and ask for a 
 committal to General Gaol, when the question of motive will be 
 fully gone into." 
 
 " Well, well ! Good gracious me ! If it must be it must. It 
 is my painful duty to put the Deemster back for trial. But I 
 suggest that a doctor be asked to see him immediately. And 
 meantime " (the High Bailiff turned to the reporters, who were 
 now busy enough over their note-books), "may I request the 
 representatives of the press to publish nothing about this painful 
 matterfat present? " 
 
 It was all over in a few minutes. The door behind the Jury- 
 box was opened again and Stowell and the policeman returned 
 to the cells. 
 
 In less than half-an-hour the news was all over the town. 
 Special editions of the newspapers (single sheets) 'had been run 
 off in furious haste, and the newsboys were shouting through 
 the streets. 
 
 Arrest of Deemster Victor Stotvell. 
 
 The news fell on the public like a thunderbolt. It eclipsed 
 their interest in the soldiers. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Like lightning out of a thunder-cloud the news fell on Gov- 
 ernment House also. On hearing it the Governor, who had been 
 thinking less about the riot than about Stowell's last words tf* 
 him, broke into uncontrollable rage. 
 
 " The fool ! The infernal fool ! After I had given him such 
 a chance, too! " 
 
 With a determined' step he went into the library, where Fenella 
 was writing letters, and broke the news to her with a kind of 
 fierce joy. At first her eyes filled with tears and then a proud 
 smile shone through them. 
 
 " You were right after all, Fenella. I see now that you must 
 throw the man up," said the Governor. 
 
 " On the contrary," said Fenella. " Now I must stand by him." 
 
 " What on earth do you mean ? " 
 
 " I mean that Victor has justified himself." 
 
 "Justified himself?" 
 
THE WAY OF THE CB08 407 
 
 " Yes. The only thing I was afraid of was that he might take 
 his life to escape from his dishonour. But n&w that he has made 
 his choice I have made mine also." 
 
 " Your choice? " 
 
 " I cannot cut him out of my heart because he has been brave 
 enough to face the consequences of his crime." 
 
 " But good heavens, girl, don't you see that he will be brought 
 up for trial, and then all the wretched story of the CoUister girl 
 Vill come out.'' " 
 
 " I'm prepared for that, father." 
 
 " Fenella," said the Grovernor, white with the passion that was 
 mastering him, " if you were my son instead of my daughter do 
 you know what I should do with you ? " 
 
 " You mean you would turn me out of the house? There will 
 be no need for that — I will go of myself, father." 
 
 " Fenella ! Fenella ! " cried the Governor, recovering himself, 
 but Fenella had gone from the room. 
 
 The Governor returned to his smoking-room. For a long half- 
 hour he ranged about, kicking things out of his way, ringing bells 
 and snapping at the servants. What was Fenella doing? Could 
 it be possible that she was taking him at his word? Unable to 
 contain himself any longer he sent for Miss Green. He got noth- 
 ing out of the old lady except lamentations. 
 
 " Oh, dear, oh dear, what is the world coming to ? " 
 
 At length, with an air of authority, he went up to Fenella's 
 bedroom, and found her on her knees before an open trunk into 
 which she was packing her clothes. 
 
 " Fenella," he said, " this is nonsense. It cannot be." 
 
 " I'm afraid it must be, father." 
 
 " Look here, girl, when a man's angry he doesn't always mean 
 what he says. I never meant you were to go." 
 
 " It's better that I should, father." 
 
 The Governor struggled hard with his pride and said, 
 
 " Listen. Don't make me ridiculous in the eyes of the whole 
 island, Fenella. I may not have acted wisely in relation to 
 Stowell and the advice I gave him — I see that now. But if so 
 perhaps it was because I was thinking less of the public service 
 than of you. If you were a father you would understand that. 
 But you cannot wish to leave me. You are my only child. I am 
 your father, rememlber. What, after all, is this man to you ? " 
 
 Fenella leaned back on her heels and her eyelid's quivered 
 for a moment. Then she said, 
 
 " We are told that a man must leave father and mother and 
 
408 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 cling to his wife^ and surely it's the same with a woman and her 
 husband. Victor is my husband, or soon will be." 
 
 " Good Lord, what are you saying, girl? " 
 
 " I promised myself to him, and I intend to keep my promise." 
 
 " But he's a prisoner, and if the governing authority 
 objects . . . . " 
 
 " In that case I'll wait until he is a prisoner no longer, and 
 then .... then I'll marry him." 
 
 " That you never shall. Not in this island anyway. No 
 clergyman here will marry you to that man against my wish." 
 
 " Then I'll go to him just the same." 
 
 " What.? " 
 
 " Yes, I'm prepared even for that sacrifice." 
 
 " You're mad. You're both mad — stark mad." 
 
 Again the Governor returned to his smoking-room. After a 
 while he heard a hackney carriage coming up the drive to the 
 porch, and then old John, the watchman, lugging a trunk along 
 the corridor. A moment later, looking through the window, he saw 
 Fenella, in the blue and white costume of her Settlement (the 
 same ia w'hich, with so much pride, he had brought her up to the 
 house from the pier in his big landau), stepping into the coach. 
 
 Then his anger and emotion together burst all bounds. He 
 tore open his door with the intention of countermanding Fenella's 
 orders and driving the hackney carriage off his grounds. But 
 before he could bring himself to do so he heard the door of the 
 carriage close and saw its wheels moving away. 
 
 Miss Green came back to the house with her handkerchief to 
 her eyes, saying, 
 
 " She was crying as if her heart would break, poor darling ! " 
 
 The Governor went slowly back to his room once more. The 
 masterful man, who had never known before what it was to have 
 tears in his eyes, was utterly, broken. He had lost his daughter; 
 he was to be a childless man henceforward; he was to spend the 
 rest of his life alone. But after a while he thought of Stowell as 
 the man who had taken Fenella from him, and his anger rose again. 
 
 " He wants punishment, does he? Very well, he shall have it, 
 and damned quick too." 
 
 Two hours later Fenella was at Castle Rushen, in the living- 
 room of the new jailer and his wife. 
 
 " I hear you want a female warder, and I've come to offer 
 myself," she said. 
 
 The new jailer, who was embarrassed', stammered something 
 about menial labour, but Fenella was not to be gainsaid. 
 
VICTORY THROUGH DEFEAT 409 
 
 I m a trained nurscj and have experience in managing people 
 — will you take me? " 
 
 " Well .... if the Governor doesn't .... for the present, 
 perhaps." 
 
 " For good," said Fenella. 
 
 Within a few minutes she was settled in her new quarters — ^a 
 large, dark, cell-like chamber, of irregular shape, with a deeply- 
 recessed window, a piece of cocoa-nut matting, a deal table, a chair, 
 a wash-stand and a truckle bed. 
 
 Two hundred years before it had been the 'tiring room of the 
 greatest of her ancestors, Charlotte de la Tremouille (Countess 
 of Derby), when, in the absence of her husband, she held the 
 fortress for weeks against the siege of Cromwell's forces. 
 
 The blood of the Stanleys was in it still. 
 
 CHAPTER FORTY-SIX 
 
 VICTORY THROUGH DEFEAT 
 
 A LITTLE later Stowell was brought up for trial at a special 
 sitting of the Court of General Gaol Delivery held in Douglas. 
 
 " This wretched case has injured the credit of the island in 
 England," said the Governor to the Attorney-General. The sooner 
 it was over and done with the better. 
 
 For a long half -hour before the proceedings began the court- 
 house was dark with men. Indignation against Stowell had suc- 
 ceeded to astonishment. Piecing things together (from Fenella's 
 outburst in Court to Gell's threat of personal violence against the 
 Deemster) people had arrived at something like the truth. The 
 lips which a few days before had saluted Stowell with cries of 
 worshipful lover were ready to break into shouts of execration. 
 
 The scoundrel! The traitor! Poor young Gell! And then 
 that girl CoUister was not so bad as they had thought her. 
 
 Stowell's enemies had been crowing with satisfaction. " Well, 
 what did I teU you.'' " said Hudgeon, the advocate. And Qual- 
 trough, M.H.K., repeated what he had said in the smoking-room 
 of the Keys — you had only to give the rascal rope and he would 
 hang himself. 
 
 His friends were yet more deadly. Nearly all had deserted 
 him. The good things they had said had been forgotten. Every 
 bad thing they could rememiber was revived, as far back as his 
 reckless days at Mount Murray as a young man and his expulsion 
 from King William's as a boy. He was a man of straw. It was 
 
410 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 surprising what people had seen in him, and astonishing that the 
 Governor had recommended him for the position of Deemster. 
 
 The press had been silent, from fear of the penalties of con- 
 tempt, but the pulpit (Sunday having intervened) had been loud 
 with platitudes, inspired by the text, " Be sure your sin will find 
 you out." 
 
 When the time came for the Judges to enter the court-house 
 the atmosphere was rank with evil passions and the acid odour of 
 perspiring people. 
 
 Taubman was the Deemster. Although tortured by rheumatism 
 he had dragged himself out of bed, having scented an opportunity 
 of gaining favour with the Governor. 
 
 The Governor presided, as it was his duty to do, but it was 
 remarked that except for one moment on taking his seat, when he 
 looked round at the open-mouthed spectators with an expression 
 which seemed to say, " What a race ! " he never raised his eyes. 
 
 It was a short trial, and rarely had there been a more irregular 
 one. Taubman was notorious for his legal deficiencies. In earlier 
 days Stowell, in one of his " Limericks," had cristened him " Old 
 Necessity," because " necessity knew no law." He had long been 
 jealous of Stowell's popularity and particularly of his rapid rise 
 to a position which he had had to wait forty years for. Now he 
 had the " upstart " in his hand at last. 
 
 Mten the case was called Stowell was brought up by two 
 policemen and placed in the dock. His cheeks were very pale and 
 his eyes heavy as with unshed tears. It was almost as if his 
 youth had stepped with one stride into age. But suff'ering gives a 
 certain sublimity, and it was said afterwards that never before had 
 he looked so strong and noble. 
 
 The spectators saw nothing of that now. His calm seemed 
 to them to be callousness. He did not appear to see the scorching 
 glances they cast at him. The last time they had seen him in 
 Court he was on the bench, now he was in the dock, and they would 
 have been better pleased if, in the dread certainty of his fate, he 
 had betrayed the fellness of terror. But except for one moment, 
 when he turned slowly round to look at them, and their murmurs 
 ceased suddenly at full sight of his face, he seemed to them to 
 have forgotten the shame of the place he stood in. 
 
 Taubman, in a rasping voice, read out the charge to the pris- 
 oner and called on him to plead. 
 
 " How say you, are you Guilty or Not Guilty.^ " 
 
 " Guilty," said Stowell in a clear voice, and then, after a 
 moment of merciless silence, there was a deep drawing of breath. 
 
 "Had you any accomplices.''" \ 
 
VICTORY TBROVGE DEFEAT 4li 
 
 " None." 
 
 " Humph! And what was your motive in committing this 
 crime? " 
 
 Again there was a moment of merciless silence, and then 
 Stowell, speaking very slowly, said, 
 
 " I had seduced the prisoner and was therefore the first cause 
 of her crime." 
 
 Ah! There was another long indrawing of breath among the 
 spectators. It was a wonder the man didn't fall dead with shame ! 
 
 " And what, if you please, was your reason for making 
 this confession? " 
 
 " I could not allow an innocent person to suffer for my crime." 
 
 " Was that your only reason ? " 
 
 The silence became breathless. After a pause Stowell said, in 
 a low voice, 
 
 " That is a question I will answer to a higher tribunal." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Taubman, with a sneer, and then the silence 
 was broken by a cowardly titter which passed through the 
 court-house. 
 
 The Attorney-General rose to summarise the facts. His face 
 was white and decomposed; his thin hair was disordered, and the 
 linen slip under his chin was awry. 
 
 Only once before since leaving Government House had he been 
 out of doors — to visit Stowell at the Police-station and receive the 
 letter which had been found on him. He, too, had dragged him- 
 self from bed to come to Court, being afraid to leave the prose- 
 cution of the son of his old friend, the boy brought up in his own 
 ofiice, to the Deputy whom the Governor was sure to appoint in 
 his place — Hudgeon, who sat by his side. 
 
 His speech did not please either the Court or the spectators. It 
 gave the impression of being a plea for the prisoner. And in- 
 deed there were moments when the Attorney seemed to forget that 
 he was there to prosecute. 
 
 Speaking in a tremulous voice, and never once looking towards 
 the dock, he said it would seem incredible that anyone in the 
 position of the accused could be guilty of the crime with which he 
 was charged. But the lucidity of his confession, and its corre- 
 spondence to the facts as they knew them, made it inconceivable 
 that he had told a lie. There could be no doubt he was guilty, and 
 being so he came under the condemnation of the law. 
 
 "Ha!" 
 
 " But," said the old man, flashing his moist eyes on the glisten- 
 ing eyes behind him, " the Crown stands for Justice, not revenge." 
 
 The Court would remember that the prisoner had made a 
 
412 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 voluntary confession, that nothing would have been known of his 
 crime if he had not of himself disclosed it, and before the sublime 
 spectacle of a man who was making the only reparation in his 
 power to the Justice he had sullied, it would be touched by the 
 fire of a great renunciation. 
 
 A murmur of dissent passed through the court-house. 
 
 Again, the Court would remember that the prisoner had con- 
 fessed to the secret sin which had tempted him to his crime. If he 
 had been a scoundrel he could have concealed it, but he had put 
 conscience before liberty, before reputation, perhaps before life. 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 Once more the Court would remember that the prisoner had 
 surrendered to Justice because another was in danger of arrest, 
 and it would not be human if it were not moved by the sight of a 
 man giving himself up to the law so that an innocent man might 
 not suffer in his stead. 
 
 Finally, the Court would remember the youth of the prisoner, 
 his undoubted talents, his brilliant promise, his high position, and 
 the revered memory of his father, and if, moved by these con- 
 siderations, it decided to impose a nominal penalty, the Crown 
 would be satisfied. 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " But whatever the pimishment the Court thinks fit to impose 
 on the prisoner," said the Attorney, " it can be as nothing to that 
 which he has inflicted upon himself. Never in this island has there 
 been so great a downfall, and rarely can suffering for sin have 
 been more terrible since the Veil of the Temple was rent in twain 
 and darkness covered the land." 
 
 It was impossible for the spectators not to be hushed to awe by 
 the daring words and quivering tones with which the old Attor- 
 ney closed his speech, but Taubman, in the ferocity of his malice, 
 was unmoved. 
 
 " Humph ! " he said. " All that means, I suppose, that a man 
 may be innocent and guilty at the same time." 
 
 And then another cowardly titter ran through the court-house. 
 
 The time had come for judgment. Taubman leaned over the 
 bench, clasped his bony fingers in front of him, and said, 
 
 " Victor Stowell, stand up." 
 
 Stowell rose, and stood with his hands interlaced, and his 
 heavy eyes fixed steadfastly on his Judge. 
 
 " Have you anything to say why judgment should not be 
 pronounced upon you? " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
VICTORY THBOVGE DEFEAT 413 
 
 It needs no skill to wound the defenceless, and for the next 
 few minutes Taubman seemed to glory in the exercise of his power. 
 
 " Prisoner at the bar/' he said, " you have confessed to the 
 crime of breaking prison to effect the escape from custody of a 
 young woman you had first debauched and then abandoned." 
 
 "Ha!" 
 
 " It has been said on your behalf (strangely enough by the 
 public servant whose duty it was to arraign you) that your con- 
 fession was voluntary. Nothing of the kind. It was made when 
 the hand of the law was upon you, when the warrant for the 
 arrest of an innocent man was about to be issued, and you were 
 face to face with the certainty of exposure and punishment." 
 
 "Ha!" 
 
 " It has been also been said that the confession of your private 
 sin shows the operation of your conscience. But your conscience 
 would have been better employed when you sat in judgment on 
 your own victim — a deliberate offence that is probaibly witihout 
 precedent in the history of criminal jurisprudence. 
 
 " Finally it has been argued that your high position and 
 family connections ought to mitigate your punishment. On the 
 contrary, they ought to increase it, as showing your disregard of 
 your responsibilities, and especially your ingratitude to the head 
 of the judiciary, his Excellency " (here Taubman bowed to the 
 Governor), " whose favours you have so ill requited." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " Your crime is clear. It is without a particle of justification. 
 You have disgraced your name, your profession, and your island. 
 Therefore the Court can only mark its sense of the enormity of 
 your offence by inflicting the maximum penalty prescribed by the 
 law — ^two years' imprisonment in Castle Rushen." 
 
 Hardly had the last words been spoken when the spectators 
 broke into frenzied shouts of approval. Neither the police nor 
 the Judge made any attempt to repress them. The Governor rose 
 hastily and hurried off the bench, and Taubman, gathering up his 
 papers, his spectacles and his two walking-sticks, hobbled 
 after him. 
 
 The shouting went on. It surged about Stowell as he stepped 
 out of the dock and passed with slow stride through the door that 
 led down to the prison. The deadened sound of it followed him 
 while he descended the stairs, and when he reached the cell it 
 mingled with yet wilder shouting from the streets, where a 
 tumultuous crowd had been waiting for the verdict. The delight 
 of the mob seemed delirious. Some women from the meaner streets 
 by the quay were dancing on the pavement. 
 
414 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 Meantime, in his robing-room with the Governor, Taubman was 
 congratulating himself on his travesty of Justice. Taking his 
 wig off his stubbly grey hair he said, 
 
 " I think I gave my gentleman his deserts for his bad treat- 
 men of your Excellency. Eh? What? " 
 
 And then the Governor spoke for the first time that day. 
 
 " Maybe so," he said, " but all the same you are not fit to 
 wipe his boots, Sir." 
 
 II 
 
 Early next morning StoweU was removed to Castle Rushen. 
 
 There was a rumour (probably inspired by the police) that he 
 would travel by the seven o'clock train, therefore at half-past six 
 the railway station and its approacihes were full of a noisy crowd. 
 But at ten minutes to seven the prison van, drawn by two horses, 
 drew up at the back door under the court-house and Stowell was 
 hustled into it. 
 
 " Come, get in, quick," said the Chief Constable (all his former 
 deference gone), and then the van rolled' away, Stowell being 
 shut up in the windowless compartment within, while the Chief 
 Constable and his Inspector of Police occupied the outer one 
 with the grill. 
 
 Crossing a swing-bridge which spanned the top of the har- 
 bour, they climbed the lane to the Head until they reached the 
 cliff road, and had the town behind them under a veil of morning 
 mist, and the open sea in front. There had been wind overnight, 
 and a fiery sun was blazing out of a fierce sky like the red light 
 from the open door of a furnace. 
 
 Stowell, in his dark compartment, had not yet asked himself 
 which way he was going. The feeling of exaltation, of doing a 
 divinely appointed duty, which had buoyed him up during the 
 trial, was now gone. The nullity of his past life, the hopelessness 
 of the future had left him with the sense of being already a dead 
 man. Two years inside the blind walls of the Castle Rushen, 
 while the sun shone and the flowers grew and the birds sang 
 outside, and the world went on without him — how could he live 
 through it? 
 
 At length, having a sense of physical as well as spiritual suffo- 
 cation, he tapped timidly at his door, and asked, when it was 
 opened, if it might remain so for a few moments that he might 
 have a breath of air. 
 
 " Certainy not," said the Chief Constable, and he clashed the 
 door back. 
 
 " Better so," thought Stowell. 
 
VICTORY THROUGH DEFEAT 415 
 
 Ke had caught a glimpse of the scene outside, and knew where 
 they were — on the rocky shelf along which he had driven with 
 Fenella after the oath-taking at Castletown. 
 
 The memory of that day came back to him like a stab. He 
 could feel Fenella's warm presence by his side; he could see her 
 gleaming eyes ; he could hear her rich contralto voice as they sang 
 together above the boom of the sea below and the cry of the sea- 
 fowl overhead: 
 
 " Love is the Queen for you and for me. 
 Salve, Salve Regina! " 
 
 What memories ! What regrets ! Only now did he know how 
 necessary Fenella had been to him — only now when he had lost 
 her. He felt like a dead man — dead, yet doomed to remember his 
 former existence. 
 
 An hour and a half passed. Stowell sat huddled up in the 
 close atmosphere of the van, with the thunderous rumble of the roof 
 above him and the crack of the driver's whip outside. He knew 
 every mile of the way. When the van swung round at a turn of 
 the road, or the horses slowed down at the foot of ^a hill, the 
 memory of some moment in his drive with Fenella came back to 
 him, and he told himself how far they had still to go. 
 
 At length they were entering Castletown. He knew that by 
 the hollow sound under the horses' hoofs as they crossed the bridge 
 over the harbour — ^the bridge from which Fenella had looked back 
 and waved her hand to the crowd about the Castle gate who had 
 raised the deafening shout — " Long live the new Deemster, hip, 
 hip, hip ! " 
 
 Groaning audiby, digging with his fingernails deep trenches in 
 his palms, praying for strength of spirit, he waited for the ordeal 
 which he felt was before him. 
 
 Another crowd had gathered about the Castle gate that 
 morning. 
 
 Telegrams had been received from Douglas saying that Stowell 
 was travelling by road, so half the people of Castletown had come 
 down to the quay as to a funeral to see the last of the con- 
 demned man before he was buried in his living tomb. 
 
 They were of two classes. The larger and noisier class con- 
 Bisted of raw youths and young men to whom the trial of 
 the Deemster had been mainly a subject for lewd jests about 
 Bessie CoUister. 
 
 One of them, with the small eyes of a sow and the thick lips 
 of a cod, wore a butcher's apron and a steel attached to a belt about 
 
416 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 his waist. This was John Qualtrough (son of Caesar), the lusty 
 ruffian whose skull had been cracked in his boyhood by the blow 
 from the stick which had been intended for Alick Gell. 
 
 The Castle walls were low by the gate, and off the shoulders of 
 a comrade Qualtrough clambered to a seat on the battlements. 
 From that elevation he beguiled the time of waiting by conducting 
 a chorus of his companions on the ground, using his steel for baton. 
 He selected the crudest of the old Manx ditties,, and amid 
 shrieks of laughter, he emphasised the doubtful lines by fre- 
 quent repetition. 
 
 " I'm not engaged to any young man I solemnly do swear. 
 For I mane to be a vargin and still the laurels wear. 
 For I mane to be a vargin and still the laurels wear." 
 
 The other class, consisting chiefly of women, demure and 
 severe, occupied themselves with serious talk about Fenella. That 
 splendid young woman ! It was shocking the way Sto'U had 
 treated her — ^worse than the other in a manner of speaking. 
 
 " They're telling me she wasn't at the trial in Douglas 
 yesterday." 
 
 " What wonder if she wasn't, poor thing ! I wouldn't trust 
 but she'll never show her face in public again." 
 
 "■ It's no use talking, the man has brought shame on the lot of 
 us and is a disgrace to the name of a Manxman." 
 
 Suddenly, over the loud clamour there came a wild shout from 
 the battlements. 
 
 " Here he is ! " 
 
 The prison van was seen to cross the bridge, and as it came up 
 to the gate, it was received with a howl of execration. 
 
 Stowell heard it. In his dark compartment the surging of the 
 crowd around the outside of the van was like the breaking of a tidal 
 wave on a sleeping town in the middle of the night. The van 
 stopped with a sickening jolt, and he heard the Inspector of 
 Police crying, 
 
 " Stand back ! Make way ! " 
 
 Then there was a flash of daylight and the voice of the Chief 
 Constable saying peremptorily, 
 
 " Come, get out ! Be quick about it." 
 
 At the next moment he was on the ground with a roar of hoarse 
 voices and a rush of contorted faces around him. There were 
 screams of lewd laughter and yells of merciless derision. Arms 
 were raised as if to strike him. He felt himself being pushed 
 and pulled by the police through the open gate and up the passage 
 way to the<>Portcullis. 
 
THE 'BE8VBBECTI0N 417 
 
 The crowd, not yet appeased, tried to force their way past the 
 jailer and his turnkeys as if to lynch him. But they were checked 
 by an unexpected sight. A young woman, in the costume of a 
 nurse, with heaving breast, quivering nostrils, and flaming eyes, 
 rushed through the gate with outstretched arms to stop them. 
 
 They recognised her instantly, but it was not that alone that 
 cowed them. There is something in a brave act which pierces the 
 noisiest crowd to the core of its cruel soul. Certainly this crowd 
 fell back and its uproar died down. 
 
 Then in a voice which vibrated with contempt and scorn, 
 Fenella tried to speak to them. 
 
 " You .... you .... you . . . . " she began, but further 
 words would not come, and returning to the Castle she clashed 
 its iron-studded gate in the people's faces. 
 
 The crowd broke up rapidly and slank away, subdued 
 and ashamed. 
 
 " Morning, men ! " 
 
 "Morning!" 
 
 Within two minutes nearly all were gone. The open space in 
 front of the Castle gate was empty, save for two old women with 
 little black shawls over their heads, who were wiping their eyes 
 on their cotton aprons. 
 
 " Did thou see that, Bella? " 
 
 " 'Deed I did, though." 
 
 " I belave in my heart it was the girl herself — the one they 
 say he has done so bad to." 
 
 " Aw well, if a woman isn't willing to stand up for her man 
 whatever he has done what is she anyway? " 
 
 CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN 
 
 THE RESURRECTION 
 
 Three days later, Fenella set out for Bishop's Court in a 
 two-horse landau. 
 
 The island had begun to recover from its fit of moral intoxi- 
 cation. Sympathy was swinging round to Stowell. The pathos 
 of his stupendous downfall had taken hold of the people. Taub- 
 man had been wrong. Nobody would have known anything of 
 Stowell's guilt if he had not revealed it himself. There must 
 be something great in a man who could take up his cross like that. 
 And as for that wonderful woman who might be living in Govern- 
 ment House but was living in Castle Rushen instead .... 
 
418 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 As Fenella, in her nurse's costume, drove through the town 
 some of the women curtsied to her, and most of the men raised 
 their hats. She returned the salutations of none. 
 
 " So that's how they expect to wipe out what they did to Victor ! 
 Not if I know it though ! " 
 
 Two hours afterwards she was at the Bishop's palace — a 
 somewhat palatial place, partly old, partly new, sleeping in the 
 shelter of big trees and surrounded by a blaze of rhododendrons. 
 
 The Bishop, in his dapper black clothes, received her in a room 
 in the old part of the house. It had been the study of the most 
 famous of his predecessors, the fanatic and saint who had ordered 
 that Kate Kinrade, for the saving of her soul, should be dragged 
 at the tail of a boat. Souvenirs of the dead Bishop were on the 
 walls and tables — his portrait, his Bible, his short crozier, his 
 tasselled staff, and his horn-rimmed spectacles. 
 
 The living Bishop was suave and voluble. He congratulated 
 Fenella on looking so well after so much trouble. 
 
 " Such a calamity ! I might almost say such a tragedy ! How 
 the island will miss him! " 
 
 He agreed with the Attorney-General. Stowell's act had been 
 one of renunciation. When a man had sinned against God, and 
 violated the world's law, he set a great example by submitting 
 to authority. 
 
 " God forbid that I should excuse his crime, but already his 
 renunciation is having a good effect throughout the island. The 
 rioting is over. The soldiers are being sent back, and as for the 
 agitators nobody listens to them any longer. Only this morning 
 the man Baldromma . . . . " 
 
 Fenella, who had been beating her foot impatiently on the 
 carpet, at length broke into her own business. 
 
 " Bishop, you have heard that I have gone to the Castle as 
 female warder? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed. It's so nice of you to stay by the poor man's 
 side while he is in prison, to see that his bodily comforts are being 
 cared for." 
 
 " But more than that will have to be done for him if his soul 
 is to be kept alive," said Fenella. 
 
 " Eeally ? If you think there is anything I can do .... " 
 
 " There is, Sir .... You know that I was to have married 
 Mr. Stowell?" 
 
 " Indeed I do. Wasn't the marriage to have taken place 
 before very long in our chapel at Bishop's Court? " 
 
 " Well, I want it to take place now. Only it must be in the 
 Chapel at Castle Eushen instead." 
 
TEE RmVBBECTION 419 
 
 " You mean .... the prison Chapel? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 For a moment the Bishop was speechless. Then recovering 
 from his astonishment, he rose and stepped to the hearthrug, 
 and standing with his back to the fire, he said, as if addressing 
 an assembly, 
 
 " Beautiful and noble, dear lady ! To be ready to become the 
 wife of the fallen man just when the whole world is hissing at him 
 in chorus, to inspire him day by day with the hope of a great 
 resurrection, of taking up manful work anew, of regaining all he 
 has lost and more — yes, it is beautiful and noble." 
 
 " Then you will be willing to marry us. Sir ^ " said Fenella. 
 
 The Bishop hesitated, and then asked Fenella what view the 
 Governor took of her intention. 
 
 " He disapproves of it altogether, and says no clergyman in the 
 island can marry us without incurring his displeasure." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " But I have always understood that the Bishop is a baron in 
 his own right and therefore independent of the Governor." 
 
 "True! That's true! StiU . . . . " 
 
 The river of rhetoric had suddenly stopped. 
 
 "Well.?" 
 
 " Mr. Stowell is a prisoner. Why marry when you can't live 
 together ? Why not wait until he is at liberty ? " 
 
 " Because he may be dead of despair before the time for that 
 comes," said Fenella, " and the resurrection you speak of may 
 never take place. His heart is breaking. He wants something to 
 live for now. He wants me." 
 
 Her eyes had filled and the Bishop had to turn his own away. 
 At length he said, stammering painfully, that he was sorry, very 
 sorry, but having to live at peace with the Governor .... 
 
 Fenella leapt to her feet. 
 
 " Bishop," she said, " the chaplain at Castletown is a poor 
 man with five young children and his living is in the gift of the 
 Governor. But if I can find any other clergyman who is willing 
 to perform the ceremony, will you permit him to do so ? " 
 
 " Ye — s .... that is to say, if you tell him what you have 
 told me, and he is prepared to take the risk." 
 
 Within two minutes more Fenella was back in her landau, driv- 
 ing towards Ballamoar across the Curragh roads, with their warm 
 and rooty odour of the bog. 
 
 Janet came running out of the house to meet her, and in a flash 
 they were crying in each other's arms. But, to Fenella's surprise, 
 
420 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 there was a look of joy in Janet's face, and on stepping into the 
 house she found an explanation. An army of maidservants were 
 in every room, with an arsenal of brushes and mops and pails. 
 
 " Why, Janet, what are you doing.'' " 
 
 " Getting ready for my boy coming back, that's what I'm 
 doing." 
 
 " But, dear heart, don't you know . . . . " 
 
 " Certainly I know. But do you think they can keep a Balla- 
 moaa- in yonder place long? 'Deed they can't. He'll be coming 
 out soon, aild' then those dirts of Manx ones who have been making 
 such a mouth will be the first to run to meet him." 
 
 It would have been cruel to gainsay her, therefore Fenella 
 described the object of her journey, told of her father's threat and 
 the Bishop's excuses. 
 
 "So now I'm looking for a clergyman who will be brave 
 enough to marry us," she said. 
 
 They were in the dining-room, and through the glass door to 
 the piazza they could see, on the edge of the cliflFs, a field's space 
 from the church, a lonely house without a tree or a bush, about it, 
 looking as if it had been slashed by the rain and winds of a hun- 
 dred winters. It was the Jurby parsonage — ^the home of Parson 
 Cowley. Janet pointed to it and said, 
 
 " Have you been there? " 
 
 At that question Fenella remembered a story her father had 
 told her about something splendid that Victor had done, before she 
 returned to the island, to save the drunken parson of Jurby 
 in the eyes of the parishioners. In another minute she was back" 
 in her carriage. 
 
 " Good-bye, child, and God bless you ! " said Janet by the 
 carriage door. " And don't forget to tell my boy that Mother 
 will be lighting the fire in the Deemster's room every night of life 
 for him." 
 
 The parsonage looked yet more desolate at a nearer view than 
 at a distance. Sea-fowl were screaming in the sky above it and 
 the earth was quaking from the measured beat of the waves against 
 the cliffs below. A patch of garden in front was rank with long 
 grass, and the salt breath of the sea had encrusted the glass of the 
 windows with a grey scale that was like the mould on a d^ad face. 
 
 The door was opened by a timid, elderly woman, the parson's 
 wife, who was her own servant and looked as if all the pride of life 
 had been crushed out of her. 
 
 " Please come in, miss," she said. And when the door had 
 been closed from the inside and she was taking Fenella into the 
 study, she called at the foot of the stairs. 
 
THE iBESUBBECTION 421 
 
 " John, a young lady to see you." 
 
 The dingy little room looked like an epitome of the life of the 
 man who lived in it. Everything was faded and worn out — books 
 in torn bindings on bulging shelves against the walls; a thread- 
 bare carpet trodden thin by the fender; a handful of earthen fire; 
 an arm-chair upholstered in horsehair and sunk in the seat as if the 
 springs had broken ; a table laden with loose papers and sprinkled 
 with shreds of tobacco, which seemed to have fallen from a shaking 
 hand ; and behind a mirror, from which half the silvering was worn 
 away, two objects on the mantelpiece — a drinking glass, which had 
 obviously contained a frothy Kquor and a photograph in a mourn- 
 ing frame of a young man in sailor's costume with the fell stamp 
 of consumption in his eyes and cheeks. 
 
 After a moment there was an unsteady step on the stairs and 
 the parson came into the room, wearing a faded skull cap and a 
 dressing-gown much patched and stained. 
 
 Fenella told him her story, as she had told it to the Bishop, 
 and then said, 
 
 " So I've come to ask if you dare run the risk of marrying us ? " 
 
 The old parson, who had been listening intently, seemed eager 
 to reply, buit something checked him, and looking across at his 
 wife, who continued to stand timidly by the door, he said, 
 
 " What do you say, Sarah? " 
 
 The old lady did not reply immediately, and pointing to the 
 photograph on the mantelpiece the parson said, 
 
 " If it had been John James's case, eh? " 
 
 " Do as you think best, John." 
 
 " Then I'll do it ! Certainly I'U do it! What do I care what 
 the Governor may do to me ? Once a priest always a priest — ^he 
 can't take that from me anyway." 
 
 It was just the chance he had been waiting for. Victor 
 Stowell had done something for him, and before he died he wanted 
 to do something for Victor Stowell. 
 
 " I will too ! I'U give give him a good wife and that's the best 
 thing a man gets in this world anyway. I've been publishing 
 your banns too. Do you know I'd been publishing your banns 
 these three Sunday mornings, Victor Stowell being one of my 
 parishioners ? " 
 
 Fenella, who was feeling a tightness in the throat, contrived 
 to say, 
 
 " Then perhaps you'll drive back with me to Castletown and 
 celebrate the service to-morrow? " 
 
 " Why shouldn't I ? ' said the parson, and off he went upstairs 
 
422 THE MASTER OP MAN 
 
 (with a firm step this time) to put on his clerical clothes and 
 pack his surplice in a hand-bag. 
 
 While his quick footsteps were shaking the ceiling above them 
 the two women stood together in the study, the young one and 
 the old one, face to face. 
 
 " It is very good of you, Mrs. Cowley, to take this risk with 
 your husband," said Fenella. 
 
 " But isn't that what we women have all got to do? " said 
 Mrs. Cowley. 
 
 And then Fenella, unable to say more, put her arms about the 
 timid old thing, who had submerged her own life in the wrecked 
 life of her husband, and kissed her. 
 
 II 
 
 Stowell had been four days in prison and his depression had 
 deepened to despair. The sense of being buried alive was crush- 
 ing. Even when he was taken into the court-yard for exercise, 
 and the white birds sailed through the blue sky, he had the sensa- 
 tion of being in a roofless tomb. 
 
 Yet he did not spare himself. He had a right to certain indul- 
 gences, but asked for none. They put him into an upstairs room, 
 which had once been the armoury of the Castle, but he said, 
 " Put me in the cell that was occupied by Bessie CoUister." 
 
 He might have continued to wear his own clothes, but said, 
 
 " Give me the same clothes as any other prisoner " — a rough 
 tweed, uncombed and undyed, just as it had come from the back 
 of the sheep. 
 
 The silence was terrible. The first night was calm, and the 
 only sound that reached him through the thick walls was the 
 monotonous wash of the waves on the shore, which lay empty and 
 alone under the dark sky. 
 
 Next morning he heard the clamour of the gulls, and knew that 
 the boats had come in from their night's fishing and the birds were 
 fighting for the refuse thrown overboard. A little later he heard 
 the deadened sound of hammering at a distance — ^they were caulk- 
 ing the deck of a new vessel in the shipyard across tiie bay. The 
 world was going on as usual, yet there he was in a silence like 
 that of the grave. 
 
 " Don't people sometimes go mad in a place like this ? " he 
 asked the jailer. 
 
 On the second night the sea was loud, but over the wailing of 
 the waves he heard a raucous voice outside. It was the voice of 
 Dan Baldromma, who, ranging round the Castle walls like an evil 
 
TBE RE8VRRE0TI0N 423 
 
 spirit, was calling up his taunting message at every lancet window, 
 not knowing which was the window of Stowell's cell. 
 
 " The Spaker is dead the day. That's the way they go, the 
 big ones that rob the people. But there's no pocket in the shroud, 
 Dempster — no pocket in the shroud." 
 
 On the morning of the third day Stowell received a letter from 
 London, telling him that His Majesty the King had withdrawn 
 his commission, having no longer any use for his services. This 
 smote him like a blow on the brain. It was an abject degradation, 
 like that of an officer being stripped of his decorations before the 
 eyes of the soldiers who had served under him. 
 
 But the worst of his pains were his thoughts about Fenella. 
 Like a man suddenly struck blind he was always living over again 
 the scenes of his past life. Sitting on his bed, with his head in his 
 hands and his eyes tightly closed, all the beautiful moments of 
 their love passed in procession before him, from the moment in the 
 glen when he had picked her up in his quivering arms and carried 
 her across the stream, to that parting in the porch at Government 
 House, after she had promised to marry him, and he had seized 
 her about the waist and fastened his lips to her mouth. 
 
 Do what he would, he could not resist the intoxication of these 
 cruel memories. But crueller still were his dreams of the future — 
 the dead dreams of their married love, when she would be wholly 
 his, the beautiful body as well as the beautiful soul. Nothing in 
 the world was to have been so lovely ais her bare arms about his 
 neck ; nothing so thrilling as the throbbing of her breasts when he 
 told her how much he loved her. But when he opened his eyes 
 and saw the blank walls of his cell about him, he felt as if some 
 devil from hell had been tormenting him. 
 
 Was this to be his greatest punishment — ^that what he had lost 
 in Fenella was to be for ever haunting him? Was he never to be 
 left in peace, now that all hope of her was gone from him for ever ? 
 
 " Better die," he thought. " A thousand times better." 
 
 Several times every day the jailer had been in to talk with him. 
 The prison was nearly full of prisoners now, many of the rioters 
 having been arrested (" Not the ring-leaders, they are always too 
 cunning "), so that his turnkeys and lady warder had as much 
 as they could do to keep things going. 
 
 This, through the thick haze of his preoccupied mind, brought 
 back to Stowell's memory a glimpse he had got of a woman in 
 nurse's costume who had flashed past him when he was being 
 hustled through that furnace of wrathful faces at the Castle gate, 
 and he asked' who she had been. 
 
 " Oh, that .... that's our lady warder," said the j ailear. 
 
424 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Is Mrs. Mylrea better then? " 
 
 " Noj she's dead. We have another one now. Sir." 
 
 "Who is she?" 
 
 The jailer hesitated and then said, " Don't you know, 
 your Honour? " 
 
 Stowell looked up quickly and a stifling recollection of 
 Fenella's last words (" If you have to go to prison, I will follow 
 you ") came surging back on him. 
 
 " Is it .... is it ... . she? " he faltered. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 That night, when Stowell's supper was brought to him, he 
 sent it away untouched. But the morning broke fair on his sleep- 
 less eyes, for he had made up his mind what to do. 
 
 A pale ray of reflected sunshine from the eastern wall of the 
 court-house was on the upper part of his cell, and he could hear 
 the voices of children who were playing on the shore. 
 
 He asked for a candle, pen and ink and paper, and sat down 
 to write a letter. 
 
 " My DEAR Fenella, — They have told me what you have 
 done and I cannot bear to think of it. When it became 
 necessary to do what I did, I knew I should have to give up 
 all hope of you, and since doing so I have sufi'ered as few 
 men can ever have sufi'ered before. But if you remain in 
 this place I shall never know another hour's sleep by night 
 or rest by day. I shall feel that in surrendering to Justice 
 I was not really doing a courageous act, as perhaps I 
 thought, but a cowardly one, because I was throwing half 
 the burden of my sins on to you, who are innocent of any 
 of them. That thought would break my heart." 
 
 He paused. The sea outside was singing on the shore; the 
 children were laughing at their play. 
 
 " Fenella, at this last moment I must tell you something. 
 Ever since I came to care for you, it has been the dearest 
 wish of my heart that, God helping me, I should make your 
 life a happy one — that, whatever happened to me, in a 
 world so full of cloud and shadow, you should live in the 
 sunshine. And now that you follow me here, to this prison, 
 this tomb .... it is too much. I cannot bear it. 
 
 " Go home, dear. Good-bye and Grod bless you ! Don't 
 let me regret the impulse that brought me here. If it was 
 right and true I must bear my punishment alone. Leave me 
 
THE BESURBECTION 425 
 
 the comfort of thinking that at least your outer life goes on 
 as if I had never shattered it. We have had many happy 
 hours together, but they are over. Life is for ever closed 
 against me. You can do nothing for me now. It was sweet 
 and good of you to come to this place, and I feel as if I 
 could give my heart's blood for one more look into your 
 dear face, but . . . . " 
 
 He had written thus far when the key rattled in the lock of his 
 cell. The door opened and there was a flash of the j ailer's lantern. 
 Instinctively, without looking up, Stowell covered his letter in his 
 blotting-paper and busied himself with both for a moment. When 
 he raised his eyes the lantern was on the table, but the j ailer was 
 gone and somebody else was standing before him. 
 
 It was Fenella. She was in wedding dress, with the veil thrown 
 back, looking more lovely than in the most delirious of his dreams. 
 At first he thought it was a phantom, bom of the preoccupation of 
 his tortured brain, and in a hushed whisper, trembling all over and 
 rising from his chair, he said, 
 
 "Fenella!" 
 She, too, was trembling, but she put on a brave air and even a 
 little of her gay raillery. 
 
 " Yes, it is Fenella. She has come, as she said she would, 
 you know." 
 
 " But why have you come? '' 
 
 " Why? Don't you know what day this is, Victor? This was 
 to have been our wedding-day. It shall be, too." 
 
 " Do you mean it? " 
 
 " Look at me. Do you think I have dressed up like this 
 for nothing? " 
 
 " But don't you see it is impossible ? " 
 
 " Impossible ? Don't you want me any longer then ? You 
 promised to marry me. Sir — are you going to break your promise?' 
 
 She was laughing, but trying at the same time not to cry. 
 Stowell's voice grew thick and husky. 
 
 " Gro home to your father's house, Fenella. That is the only 
 place for you.,"' 
 
 " But my father has turned me out, so if you send me away 
 also I shan't have a roof to cover me." 
 
 " Is that true? " 
 
 She tried to laugh again with her old gaiety. 
 
 " Well .... nearly." 
 
 " You cannot live in a place like this, Fenella." 
 
426 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 " Why not? I have the apartments of a Queen, and what was 
 good enough for her will be good enough for me, surely." 
 
 " But you forget — I am a prisoner, and if the Governor 
 objects . . . . " 
 
 " He doesn't. He has been told and has raised no objection." 
 
 " But there isn't a clergyman in the island who would marry 
 a woman like you to a man like me." 
 
 " Oih yes, there's one, and' I have brought him with me." 
 
 " Who . . . . " 
 
 " Somebody you did a beautiful thing for long ago, and who 
 new wants to do soimething for you — for me, I mean. Come in. 
 Parson Cowley." 
 
 Then Stowell saw that the door was open and that Parson 
 Cowley was standing in the darkness beyond it. The old parson 
 came into the cell at Fenella's call, sober as a Judge, but with his 
 face more broken up by emotion than it had ever been by drink, for 
 he had heard everything. 
 
 " Parson Cowley," sadd Stowell, in a hoarse voice, " show her 
 it is impossible." 
 
 The old man swallowed something in his throat and answered, 
 
 " Nothing seems impossible to love, my son." 
 
 " But tell her that no good woman can live all her life with 
 a dishonoured man like me." 
 
 Again the old parson cleared his throat. 
 
 " I know one who has been doing so for forty years. Sir." 
 
 Stowell fell back on his chair and dropped his head over his 
 arms on the table. Parson Cowley, unable to bear more, slipped 
 out of the cell and puUed the door behind him. 
 
 Fenella and Stowell were then alone. She knew that her last 
 chance had come. She had to conquer him now or lose him for 
 ever. It was the primitive man against the primitive woman, only 
 their age-long positions were reversed, and with all the battery of 
 her womanhood she meant to win him. Stepping closer she said, 
 in a caressing voice, 
 
 " Victor, you won't send me away from you, will you ? " 
 
 " I shall always love you, Fenella," said Stowell, whose head 
 was still down. " I shall love you as an angel." 
 
 " But forgive me, dear, I am only a woman, and I want to be 
 loved as a woman first." 
 
 He raised his head and looked at her. Her eyes were glisten- 
 ing, her lips were trembling, never before had she seemed to him 
 so beautiful. Feeling himself weakening he rose and turned away. 
 
 " I should never forgive myself, Fenella, if I allowed you to 
 make this sacrifice." 
 
TBE RESURRECTION 427 
 
 " What sacrifice? Everything I want in the world is within 
 these walls." 
 
 " Don't tempt me, FeneUa. Go away, I beg of you." 
 
 " Victor, I am for you. You are for me. Do you want to 
 rob me of the only man in the world for me? " 
 
 His heart was beating fast. 
 
 " Go away, I tell you. I cannot trust myself any longer." 
 
 But the more he commanded her to go, the more her eyes glis- 
 tened with a look of triumph. 
 
 " If I am to go out of this place, you'll have to carry me out," 
 she said, " just as you carried me across the river in the glen." 
 
 He gasped, and then flung out at her in a torrent of words. 
 
 " Why do you come like this ? Is it only to torture me with 
 the thought of what might have been? Haven't I done enough 
 wrong to you already? If I do this wrong also I shaU hate 
 myself. And the end of that will be that I shall come to hate you 
 also. I do hate you. Go away ! For God's sake go ! " 
 
 FeneUa, with gleaming eyes, took one step closer. 
 
 " Victor," she said, " you love me. You know you do. You 
 have never loved any other woman in the world — never for one 
 single moment." 
 
 He looked back at her again. Her arms were stretched out to 
 him; her bosom was heaving; her lips were quivering and apart. 
 He could struggle no longer. 
 
 "Fenella!" 
 
 " Victor ! " 
 
 She had conquered. They were clasped in each other's arms. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Half-an-hour afterwards they were married in the prison 
 chapel. The little place was naked enough now. No flowers, no 
 flags, no carpets, no cushions. Only the two rows of forms, with- 
 out backs, and the placards on the whitewashed walls at either side 
 — " For Men " and " For Women." 
 
 The deal table which served for altar was covered by a kitchen 
 table-cloth, on which nothing stood but a plain brass cross and 
 a couple of lighted candles in kitchen candlesticks. 
 
 Parson Cowley, in his surplice, stood in front of it, with his 
 well-thumbed prayer-book in his trembling hands. The two who 
 were being married were kneeling at his feet — the sin-soiled man 
 and the daughter of a line of old Manx Kings, bearing a name 
 that had been written high in English history for five hundred 
 years. The jaUer and his wife were standing somewhere in the 
 
428 THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 shadows. There was no sound except that of the parson's quaver- 
 ing voice within and the low rumble of the sea outside. 
 
 " / require and charge you, as ye will answer at the 
 dreadful day of Judgment, when the secrets of all hearts 
 shall he disclosed, that if either of you know of any impedi- 
 ment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in Matri- 
 mony, ye do now confess it." 
 
 Stowell made a stifled sound as of protest. FeneUa put down 
 her hand and took his hand and held it. 
 
 " Victor Christian, wilt thou have this Woman to thy 
 wedded wife? " 
 There was a sensible pause, and Parson Cowley leaned down 
 to StoweU and whispered, 
 "Say 'I wiU/ my son." 
 Then came a slow, [half -smothered murmur, 
 " I . . . . will." 
 
 " Fenella Charlotte de la Tremouille, wilt thou have this 
 Man to thy wedded husband? " 
 In a clear, unfaltering voice FeneUa answered, 
 " I will." 
 
 It was all over. The parson and the jailer and his wife were 
 gone. Stowell and FeneUa were alone together in the prison 
 chapel, locked in a passionate emibrace. The kitchen candleis were 
 burning out, but the little dark place shone with glory. The air 
 was stirred as with the presence of angels and lit as by a 
 celestial torch. 
 
 In their immense happiness every trouble of life seemed to be 
 gone. Two years ? It would be like two months, two weeks, two 
 days — ^it would be like a iwalk in the sunshine. 
 
 " We must hold together now, dear." 
 
 " Yes, until death parts us." 
 
 Their hearts swelled with gratitude. Love had taken the sting 
 out of suffering — Love, the saviour, the redeemer. A great hymn 
 of thanksgiving was going up from body and from soul. 
 
 They talked of the future. 
 
 " Will you leave the island when your time eomes, dear ? " 
 
 " Indeed no, never." 
 
 Where his sin had been there also should be his expiation. 
 
 " How great ! How glorious ! " 
 
 She cried a little, being so happy, and he had to comfort her. 
 Oh, mystery of the heart of woman! They had changed places 
 
CONCLUSION 429 
 
 again, and now it was she who was the weak one — or pretended to 
 be so — ^just to make him feel how strong he was, being the man, 
 and that she would have to look up to him all her life to guide 
 and protect her. 
 
 " Will you love me always, Victor? " 
 
 " Always ? As sure as Gt)d . . . . " 
 
 " Hush ! I know you will, dearest. But being only a woman 
 I sfliall want you to tell me so every night and every morning." 
 
 He warned her of the struggles they would have to go through 
 yet, even when the time came to leave tiiat place and return to t£e 
 world — of the many who would look askance at them for his sin's 
 sake. But she said no, and painted far him a picture of his com- 
 ing out of prison. 
 
 What a scene it would be! His people, his beloved country- 
 men and countrywomen, who were good at heart, would be at the 
 Oastle gates to meet him. There would be thousands and tens 
 of thousands of them to go back with him over the hill to BaUa- 
 moar. Carriages, cars, spring-carts, stiflf-carts, fishermen in their 
 ganzies and lifeboatmen in their stocking caps — such a procession 
 across the mountains as nobody had ever seen in that island before, 
 his little nation taking him home. 
 
 " Oh, I see it all, Victor. When the time comes for you to go 
 through the Castle gates it will be like passing out of death into 
 life, out of the cloud of night into the glory of the sunrise." 
 
 He smiled, a melancholy smile, and shook his head. 
 
 " I have much to go through yet. You, too, Fenella." 
 
 But well she knew that the victory had been won, that the 
 resurrection of his soul bad already begun, that he would rise 
 again on that same soil on which he had so sadly fallen, that shin- 
 ing like a star before his brightening eyes was the vision of a 
 far greater and nobler life than the one that lay in ruins behind 
 him, and that she, she herself, would be always by his side — to 
 " ring the morning bell for him." 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 The herring shoal, which in the early summer comes down from 
 Norway to the western coast of Man, drifts eastward as the year 
 advances, past the Calf Island, the Sound and the Spanish Head, 
 with their deafening clamour of ten thousiand sea-fowl, to where 
 the big waves of the Atlantic roll to their organ music, and the 
 porpoises tumble through the blue waters of the Channel on their 
 way back to the frozen seas. 
 
 In the late autumn of the year of Victor Stowell's trial and 
 
43* THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 imprisonment the fishermen from Ramsey and Douglas, going 
 south to their fishing ground in the evening of the day, would 
 find as they sailed past Castletown, and opened the Poolvaish, 
 that the sun had set beihind Caistle Ruishen and its square tower 
 stood up blaxjk against the crimsoning sky. 
 
 Then they would go down on their knees on the decks of their 
 boats, just as in old days they used to do after they had shot their 
 nets at night, to acknowledge their Maker, and pray, in their 
 Manx, to St. Bridget and St. Patrick to send them safely home in 
 the morning with a full cargo of " the living and the dead." 
 
 But it was not the harvest of the sea they were thinking of 
 then. It was of the two who lay interned within the walls of 
 the grim fortress — ^the man who had voluntarily made the great 
 Sacrifice for his sin, and the woman, who in the greatness of her 
 love was living out his punishment beside him. 
 
 In my early manhood I used to hear old Methodist fishermen 
 say that when they rose from their knees, after their rough hands 
 had been held close over their eyes, and looked back at the Castle, 
 they would sometimes see a golden cross plainly outlined in the 
 sky above it. 
 
 Perhaps it was only another of their Manx superstitions, but 
 it seemed to bring a certain inspiration to their simple hearts for 
 all that, by reminding them of a story which resembled (very 
 remotely and feebly) the great one which they told each other 
 every Sunday in their little wayside chapels — the story of Him 
 Who " gave the world away and died." 
 
 " He descended into hell; the third day He rose again 
 from the dead; He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the 
 right hand of God the Father Almighty . . . . " 
 
 THE END 
 
THE DEEMSTER 
 
 This is a story of sin and suffering and redemption. A young man 
 of great possibilities, Dan Mylrea, having his good angel and his bad 
 angel on either hand, commits, in a wild fit of momentary passion, a ter- 
 rible crime, is condemned (by his own father, who is the ultimate judge) 
 to life-long banishment and solitude, is purified and ennobled by his soli- 
 tary life and finally returns to the society of his fellow-men as the 
 saviour of his people. The scene is the Isle of Man, the period the 
 eighteenth century. This story was the first to give Hall Caine his place 
 among British Novelists, being commonly compared with the work of 
 Victor Hugo. It was published in 1887, has since sold in vast numbers 
 and been translated into nearly all European languages. 
 
 The Seotsmwn says : " This is one of the great novels." 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 653,098 copies of English editions sold to date. 
 
 This is the story of a young Anglican clergyman, John Stors, who tries 
 to live in the twentieth century in strict imitation of the life of Christ 
 (believing that in the literal interpretation of His teaching lies the 
 enly salvation of the world) and is broken to pieces, both from within 
 and from without, by his love of a. woman and by the hard facts of 
 modem existence. The scene is London, and the period the present age. 
 The heroine. Glory Quayle, belongs to the number of the beloved women 
 in fiction. On its first publication in 1897, the " Christian " provoked 
 world-wide discussion, in which Tolstoy took part. It has been trans- 
 lated into nearly all European languages. Nearly 700,000 copies have 
 been sold in English editions only. The story which has been repeatedly 
 dramatised is played in nearly all countries. 
 
 The Newcastle Chronicle says: "This novel is a noble inspiration 
 carried to noble issuas, an honour to Hall Caine and to English 
 fiction." 
 
THE MANXMAN 
 
 399,426 copies of English editions sold to date. 
 
 This is the novel moat generally associated with Hall Caine's name. 
 Two men, who love each other like David and Jonathan, are separated 
 by the love each bears for the same woman, Kate Cregeen. The one is 
 married to her, and by the other, in circumstances of tragic temptation, 
 she has been betrayed. Out of this complication comes situations of 
 searching pathos, culminating in a public confession and a great re- 
 nunciation. The scene throughout is the Isle of Man, and the deeply 
 injured husband and friend, Pete Quilliam, has become one of the best 
 known figures in modern fiction and on the stage. Mr. Gladstone, who 
 was a warm admirer of it, said, that though he disapproved of divorce, 
 he recognised the integrity of the author's aim. Nearly 400,000 of the 
 English edition has been sold already. It is a love story of great 
 intensity. 
 
 T. P. O'Connor says : " Thia is a, very fine and great story — one of 
 the finest and greatest of our time." 
 
 THE BONDMAN 
 
 468,327 copies of English editions sold to date. 
 
 This story is intended to show the futility of the spirit of revenge — ^that 
 vengeance belongs to God only. Two sons (born in different countries) 
 of the same father by different mothers set out to search for each other 
 to avenge the wrongs they have suffered through their parents. When 
 they meet it is as fellow-prisoners chained together in a penal settle- 
 ment, where their identity is unknown (their names being hidden by 
 numbers) and they become the most passionately devoted friends. 
 Finally one of the half brothers gives his life for the life of the man he 
 came to kill, and restores him to the woman they have both loved. 
 The scene is chiefly Iceland, and the period the recent past. " The 
 BoNDMAU " is one of Hall Caine's most moving love stories. In some 
 foreign countries, particularly Scandinavia, it is thought to be his best. 
 
 The Scotsman says : " Hall Caine has, in this work, placed himself 
 beyond the front rank of the novelists of the day." 
 
THE SCAPEGOAT 
 
 This is the story of a, young and lovely girl, Naomi, who, born deaf, 
 dumb, and blind, recovers her senses one by one, in circumstances of 
 startling excitement in the life of her father, thus having the beauty 
 of the world revealed to her in sight, sound and speech, after her in- 
 telligence has matured. Around this central theme a dramatic nar- 
 rative gathers of life in Morocco, under the present half-civilised regime. 
 The Times says " the ' Scapegoat ' is the best of Hall Caine's novels," 
 and that opinion is shared by many good judges. It has had a warm 
 reception in foreign countries, particularly in Germany, where it has 
 been said that the central character bears an aflSnity to Goethe's im- 
 mortal Mignon. 
 
 The Times : " This is the author's masterpiece." 
 
 THE ETERNAL CITY 
 
 704,371 copies of English editions sold to date. 
 
 This is by much the most popular of Hall Caine's novels thus far, more 
 than a million copies of it having been sold in English editions only. 
 It is intended to show that the morality which is required of individual 
 men should govern nations also. The chief scene is Rome, and the Pope 
 (a reverent portrait resembling Pius IX) is one of the leading charac- 
 ters. The story, which was first published in 1901, anticipated the 
 Socialistic and Communistic movement which is now rife, not only in 
 Italy, but throughout Europe. A socialist leader of high character and 
 capacity, David Rossi, makes an effort to carry into effect the teachings 
 of Mazzini, which he understands to be according to the precepts of the 
 Lord's Prayer. At the crisis of his endeavor he is betrayed into the 
 hands of the authorities by the woman he loves, who is moved solely by 
 the desire to save his life. The perils of the communistic and anti- 
 military movement as well as its spiritual ideals form the background 
 of the story, but its main theme is love — the upraising of a woman's 
 character under the influence of a pure affection. The love story is the 
 strongest element in this greatly popular book. 
 
 The Methodist Times says : " It is an enthrailling, delicious, and 
 most pathetic love story." 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON 
 
 368,925 copies of English editions sold to date. 
 
 This is an Iceland story, like " The Bondman," but totally different in 
 spirit and treatment. It is a modern rendering of the Biblical parable 
 of the same name, with a strong appeal for the elder brother, and it is 
 intended to say that an evil act once done, can never be undone. Some 
 of the incidents take place on the 'Riviera, the " far country," in which 
 the prodigal wastes his substance. When he returns home he finds, not 
 the " fatted calf " awaiting him, but the wreckage caused by his conduct. 
 " The Pbodigai Son " was published simultaneously in eight foreign 
 countries, and was even more warmly praised abroad than at home. 
 Nearly half a million copies of it' have been sold in the English edi- 
 tions. It was dramatised for Drury Lane Theatre and produced with 
 great success. 
 
 The Westminster Gazette says: "In truth, a work that must cer- 
 tainly rank with the best in recent fiction." 
 
 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 This is a story of Egypt and the Soudan with its principal scenes ia 
 Cairo and Khartoum. It was published in 1909, and anticipated by 
 many years some racial, political and religious problems which are 
 now agitating those countries. The central character resembles the 
 Madhi in his earlier years. At first he is a, religious reformer only, but 
 later he developes political aims which bring him. into sharp collision 
 with the British rule. A tragic happening enlists on his side the son 
 of the English Consul-General who remotely resembles the late Lord 
 Cromer in his policy, but not his person. Out of this fact and the 
 further complication of his affection for an English woman, Helena, the 
 author developes his love story. The glamour and mystery of the East 
 are the background of the novel, which is a strong contrast to the stark 
 simplicity of the scenes of Hall Caine's Manx and Icelandic stories. 
 
 The Liverpool Post says : " Hall Caine's power of rivetting and en- 
 grossing attention will be found in this novel at its zenith." 
 
THE WOMAN THOU GAYEST ME 
 
 Over 475,000 copies of English editions sold to date 
 
 This novel, as its title indicates, is intended to illustrate the 
 place which, through all the ages hitherto, woman has held 
 in relation to man, the place assigned to her by law, custom, 
 and even religion. Mary O'Neill, a devout Catholic, is 
 brought up in a convent in Rome, and then married, before 
 sex has awakened in her, to a dissolute man of rank. On 
 realising her position she rebels, and refuses herself to her 
 husband, but to prevent scandal, continues to live under his 
 roof. Later on, love is born in her, but it is for another 
 and much worthier man. What is she to do ? In her eyes it 
 is sin to love anybody except her husband. And her religion 
 forbids her to seek her happiness through divorce. Thus she 
 passes through a great struggle. At length her love conquers 
 and she flies from the house in which she is a wife in name 
 only. A child is bom and she goes through the still greater 
 struggle of a mother with an " unwanted " child. At length 
 salvation comes to her, without the violation of any law of 
 state or church. The scene is chiefly London. On first pub- 
 lication the "Woman " was much criticised for the frankness 
 of its treatment of a delicate subject, but the criticism has 
 long died down. 
 
 The Daily Chronicle says : " It strikes a great blow for 
 righteousness, and in that light it is HaU Caine's 
 greatest achievement" 
 
THE MASTER OF MAN 
 
 As " The Womak^ Thou Gavest Me " was the woman's 
 story, so " The Master of Man " is the man's story. Both 
 deal with the same eternal subject. They are the opposite 
 facits of the same coin. The new novel is, like " The 
 Deemstee/' a story of sin, suffering and redemption. But 
 the story is entirely different. Victor Stowell, a young man 
 of fine nature, coming of a family with high traditions, com- 
 mits a sin against a woman in circumstances of extreme 
 temptation such as come to millions of young men in every 
 generation. He conceals his sin, and his concealment leads 
 to other and still other sins, untU his whole life is wrapped 
 up in falsehood, and even the little cominunity in which he 
 lives is in danger of being submerged in the consequences. 
 In his sufferings he descends as into Hell, but at length he 
 sees that there is only one salvation for himself, his victim 
 and his people — confession and reparation. After he has 
 confessed his secret sin and paid the penalty in renunciation, 
 he is saved from spiritual death by the love of a noble- 
 hearted woman who has inspired him to the act of atonement 
 — so the climax of the story is the resurrection of his soul. 
 The scene is literally the Isle of Man, and the period the 
 present, but the one may be said to be aU the world, and the 
 other all time, for the subject is universal. 
 
J. B. UPPINCOTT COMPANY'S 
 PUBLICATIONS 
 
 A SELECTION OF NEW AND OLD 
 BOOKS ON A VARIETY OF SUBJECTS 
 
 THE SONG OF SONGS. Being a collection of love lyrica of 
 Ancient Palestine. By Morris Jastrow, Jr., Ph.D., LL.D. 
 
 Professor Jastrow's new work is a companion volume to his GENTLE 
 CYNIC (The Book of Ecelesiastes) and to his BOOK OF JOB. These 
 three books of the Bible have been chosen by him for popular presenta- 
 tion, because of their outstanding character as literary masterpieces, and 
 because of their human appeal. This new translation is based on a 
 revised text. The author, also gives the origin, growth and interpre- 
 tation of the Songs. These twenty-three songs are as fresh in their 
 appeal to the human heart to-day as they were over two thousand years 
 ago, — the author has given descriptive and enticing titles to them, such 
 as " Love's Esctasy," " The Saucy Damsel," "Love's Longing," etc., etc. 
 Frontispiece by Alexander Bida. Handeome octavo. $2.50 
 
 SEEING THE SUNNY SOUTH By John T. Fans 
 
 We are enabled in this book to appreraate the true wonders of the 
 South, so rich in scenic beauty, historic tradition and natural resources. 
 Dr. Faris gives a fascinating and vivid picture of the marvellous coun- 
 try below the Mason and Dixon line. He has the gift of being able to 
 naake the reader feel something of the real atmosphere and human back- 
 ground of the country through which he passed. Bits of history, delight- 
 ful anecdotes of people and places enliven bis narrative. Frontispiece 
 in color, and one hundred and fifteen doubletone illustrations. Hand- 
 some octavo. $6.00 
 
 THE WHISTLER JOURNAL By Elizabeth R-and Joseph Pennell 
 
 This companion wprk to the famous " Life " is full of the most 
 intimate relations of Whistler and his friends, including Eosetti, 
 William Morris, and many other notable personages. It presents an 
 unusual view from the inside of art ind literary circles of London and 
 Paris at that time. There is much that is amusing and some that is 
 scandalous. The eighty unusual illustrations are a feature that will 
 be prized by collectors; four of them are in color. Crown octavo, uni- 
 form with the " Life." $8.50 
 Limited de Luxe Edition. $15.00 
 
 A TALE OF A WALLED TOWN 
 
 AND OTHER VERSES By B 8266— Penitentiary 
 
 A volume of verse which is a real human document. William 
 Stanley Braithwaite in his introduction to "A Tale of a Walled Town," 
 says: " I do not say that 'A Tale of a Walled Town ' is aa great a poem 
 as either ' The Song of David ' or ' The Ballad of Reading Gaol,' but I 
 do say that nothing ranks between them and the poem of B 8266, 
 and that behind the latter is a long descent to any sim- 
 ilar accomplishment." $2.00 
 
 ix 
 
LIPFlNCOTT'S PRACTICAL BOOKS: 
 
 Serve Art and Beauty in the Home. 
 
 These are most complete and elaborately illuatrated. All <me 
 wishes to know on. each of the subfjects ia found under one cover. 
 Almost every phase of art in the home is covered — interior decoration, 
 furniture, arts and crafts, rugs, architecture, garden designings. 
 Each volume profusely illustrated in color, halftone and line, and with 
 charts and mjaps where necessary. Bound in decorated cloth. Octavo. 
 In a box. Write for illustrated circulars of the seven titles. 
 
 FICTION OF CHARM AND DISTINCTION 
 
 THE THING FROM THE LAKE By Eleanor M. Ingram 
 
 "A tale from the border land of dread." Koger Locke, successful 
 composer, purchases a, ooimtry-place. On the first night of his residence 
 a mysterious some one wakes him from a sound sleep and warns him 
 that his life is in danger. Thus begins a tale of mystery and horror in 
 which the suspense is sustained until the climax, when in a sudden flash 
 the whole truth is revealed. The reader can take his choice of either 
 an occult or scientific explanation of the mystery. Frontispiece. $1.90 
 
 WOUND STRIPES By Bertha Lippincott Coles 
 
 Romances After the War. One of the most interesting features 
 of the readjustment of human relations after the war has been the 
 sometimes humorous or pathetic romances of the returning men. Mrs. 
 Coles has collected in this volume five of her inimitable and heart- 
 appealing stories about war heroes. They thrill with love and 
 patriotism. $1.50 
 
 PRINCESS SALOME By Dr. Burris Jenkins 
 
 " Princess Salome, A Tale of the Days of Camel Bells," will be ad- 
 mired by some for the thrilling tale it tells; discussed by others for the 
 manner of the telling; and cherished by thousands for the inspiration 
 and faith it will give. It is startling, dramatic, and makes real to us 
 the wonder and emotion which must have been experienced by the early 
 followers of Christ. Frontispiece in color. $2.00 
 
 THE TRYST By Grace Livingston Hill 
 
 Mrs. Hill's novels are the wished-for books in many homes. Nothing 
 unsavory ever creeps between the pages to mar her narratives. " The 
 Tryst" is the gripping story of John Preeves, — how in his seeking 
 after God he finds Patty Merill, and helps to clear the mystery that 
 surrounds her life as well as the mystery of a death. By far the strongest 
 story by this popular writer. Frontispiece in color. $2.00 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF THE SYCAMORE By Carolyn Wells 
 
 Carolyn Wells haa unsurpassed genius in creating plots and inci- 
 dents that are unusual, bizarre, and baffling to the lover of mystery. 
 Each new " Fleming Stone " story is original and different. A cry of 
 fire, a murder, and a voluntary confession of three people to the crime 
 is the crux of the latest and miost gripping story of hex pen. Frontis- 
 piece in color. $2.00 
 
NO DEFENCE By Gilbert Parker 
 
 "No Defence" will be classed with the really great romances. It 
 is Parker at his best. " It has dash, fire, and romance; dramatic situa- 
 tions and incidents, vivid pictures of West Indian forest and plantation 
 life, and an appealing love tale." — The Outlook, i Illustrations. $2.00 
 
 HAPPY HOUSE By Jane Abbott 
 
 This is the exceptional novel which everyone enjoys. It is the spirit 
 of youth and love and joy caught between the covers of a book and done 
 in the wholesome American way. Frontispiece in color. $1.75 
 
 RECENT OUTSTANDING BOOKS 
 
 SEEING THE FAR WEST By John T. Faris 
 
 A remarkable panorama of the scenic glories of the States from the 
 Ilockies to the Pacific. 113 Illustrations and two Maps. $6.00 
 
 THE BOOK OF JOB By Morris Jastrow, Jr., Ph.D.. LL.D. 
 
 Dr. Jastrow with rare insight and charm brings forth into the light 
 of understanding this most glorious of poems. Frontispiece. Octavo. $4.00 
 
 THE ORIENT IN BIBLE TIMES By Elihu Grant 
 
 Ji. fascinating and historic panorama of the Oriental world, its 
 peoples, civilization, and history during Bible times. 30 Illustrations 
 and Map. $2.50 
 
 PICTURE ANALYSIS OF GOLF STROKES 
 
 By James M. Barnes 
 
 " Jimmie " Barnes shows and explains Every Detail of Every Shot 
 in the text and with 300 remarkable action photographs. " It has 
 already squared itself and much more in sight" wrote one enthusiast. 
 It plays every club in the bag. Large octavo. $6.50 
 
 LIPPINCOTT'S HOME MANUALS 
 
 No woman can afford to be without these splendid handbooks for 
 use in the home. They show how to save time, money and energy in, 
 houseihold work of all kind. Five volumes have been published on 
 Housewifery, The Business of the Household, Home and Community 
 Hygiene, Clothing for Women, Successful Canning and Preserving. 
 Others are in preparation. Bach profusely illustrated. Write for 
 descriptive circulars. 
 
 TRAINING FOR LIBRARIANSHIP By J. H. Friedel, M.A. 
 
 Gives interesting facts and data regarding all phases of public and 
 special library work, useful to anyone who contemplates entering or 
 advancing in the profession. 8 Illustrations. $1.75 
 
 THE BOOK OF COURAGE By John T. Faris 
 
 This is not psychological medicine for neurasthenicsi, but strong 
 mental food suitable for the digestion of any one. $1.50 
 
 LIMERICKS By Florence Herrick Gardiner 
 
 This remarkable collection of the world's most famous limericks, 
 published originally under the title of " The Smile on the Face of the 
 Tiger," has been revised amd enlarged, and contains 16 amusing 
 illustrations. $1.00 
 
THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE oy ^^..^ _ 
 
 This companion volume to "The Orient in Bible Times" gives a. 
 vivid and trutliful picture of present-day manners, customs and life in 
 Palestine. 45 Illustrations. $2.50 
 
 THE CHARM OF FINE MANNERS By Mrs. Helen Ekin Starrett 
 
 This character-forming book for girls is being accepted widely as 
 
 the keybook of the great movement for better morals and manners in, 
 
 the young which is now sweeping the country. $1.00 
 
 MRS. WILSON'S COOK BOOK By Mrs. Mary A. WiUon 
 
 This book costs less than the price of a good meal and will save 
 
 the price of many. There are 496 pages of new recipes and menus to 
 
 suit every purse. $2.50 
 
 LIPPINCOTT'S MERIT BOOKS FOR BOYS & GIRLS 
 
 WOODCRAFT SERIES By Dan Beard 
 
 American Boys' Book of Wild Animals. Profusely illustrated. $3.00- 
 American Boys' Handy Book of Camplore and Woodcraft. 377 
 
 Illustrations. $3.00. 
 
 American Boys' Book of Bugs, Butterflies and Beetles. 280 
 
 Illustrations. $2.50. 
 
 American Boys' Book of Signs, Signals and Symbola 363 lUustrar 
 
 tions. $2.50. 
 
 Dan Beard knows what real boys enjoy. His books are instructive 
 
 and entertaining and are prized by every " regular feUow." 
 
 AMERICAN TRAIL BLAZERS' SERIES 
 
 Twelve thrilling stories with authentic historical backgrounds 
 based on American heroes and incidents. Each illiistrated in color and 
 halftone, $1.75. Write for descriptive circulars. 
 
 STORIES FOR GIRLS By Jane Abbott 
 
 Aprilly, 4 Illustrations, $1.75. 
 
 Highacres, 4 Illustrations, $1.75. 
 
 Keineth, 4 Illustrations, $1.50. 
 
 Larkspur, 4 IllustratiODs, $1.50. 
 
 Mrs. Abbott, the popular writer of healthy and enlivening fiction for 
 girls, has been compared to Louisa May Alcott. Her high ideals for 
 womanhood have won her a growing popularity. Real girls faced by 
 real problems are the characters in her stories, which are filled with 
 the joyous spirit of youth and spring. 
 
 STORIES ALL CHILDREN LOVE SERIES 
 
 Nineteen famous stories for children, the latest volume being 
 " Mazli," by Johanna Spyri, author of " Heidi." Ask to see these books. 
 They should be in every child's room. Each volume is printed in laro-e 
 type on white opaque paper, with from eight to twelve beautiful illus- 
 trations in color, attractive lining papers, handsome binding, and in- 
 comparable at the price per volume, $1.50. 
 
 THE CHILDREN'S CLASSICS 
 
 Sixteen favorite fairy and story books for very little children, the 
 latest one being "All Time Stories," a collection of short stories from 
 many famous books. The various titles in this series have been very 
 carefully edited and simplified for little folks. It contains such books as 
 " Gulliver's Travels," "A Child's Garden of Verses," " Moni, the Goat 
 Boy," etc. Illustrations io color. Each $0.75. Write for descrip- 
 tive circular.