"What passed between you at that interview?"
There was no answer to this question.
"Tell the jury if there was any unpleasantness between you and your brother at two o'clock the day before yesterday."
There was a pause, and then the silence was broken by the reply, meekly spoken:
"It is true that he was angry."
"What was the cause of his anger?"
Another pause and no answer. The Deemster repeated his question, and still there was no reply.
"Listen; on your answer to this question the burden of the indictment must rest. Circumstance points but too plainly to a crime. It points to one man as perpetrator of that crime, and to five other men as accessories to it. But it is necessary that the jury should gather an idea of the motive that inspired it. And so I ask again, what was the difference between you and your brother at your interview on the afternoon of the day before yesterday?"
There was a deep hush in the court. A gloomy, echoless silence, like that which goes before a storm, seemed to brood over the place.
All eyes were turned to the witness-box.