The Deemster

by Sir Hall Caine

At eleven o'clock the crowd at Tynwald had grown to a vast concourse that covered every foot of the green with a dense mass of moving heads. In an enclosed pathway that connected the chapel with the mount three carriages were drawn up. The Deemster sat in one of them, and his wizened face was full of uncharity. By his side was Jarvis Kerruish. On an outskirt of the crowd two men stood with a small knot of people around them; they were Quilleash and Teare. The Ballasalla prophetess, with glittering eyes and hair in ringlets, was preaching by the door of the inn, and near her were Corkell and Crennell, and they sang when she sang, and while she prayed they knelt. Suddenly the great clamorous human billow was moved by a ruffle of silence that spread from side to side, and in the midst of a deep hush the door of the chapel opened, and a line of ecclesiastics came out and walked toward the mount. At the end of the line was the Bishop, bareheaded, much bent, his face white and seamed, his step heavy and uncertain, his whole figure and carriage telling of the sword that is too keen for its scabbard. When the procession reached the mount the Bishop ascended to the topmost round of it, and on the four green ledges below him his clergy ranged themselves. Almost at the same moment there was a subdued murmur among the people, and at one side of the green, the gate to the west, the crowd opened and parted, and the space widened and the line lengthened until it reached the foot of the Tynwald. Then the cart that brought the sergeant and his prisoner from the castle entered it slowly, and drew up, and then, with head and eyes down, like a beast that is struck to its death, Daniel Mylrea dropped to his feet on the ground. He was clad in the blue cloth of a fisherman, with a brown knitted guernsey under his coat, and sea-boots over his stockings. He stood in his great stature above the shoulders of the tallest of the men around him; and women who were as far away as the door of the inn could see the seaman's cap he wore. The sergeant drew him up to the foot of the mount, but his bowed head was never raised to where the Bishop stood above him. An all-consuming shame sat upon him, and around him was the deep breathing of the people.

Presently a full, clear voice was heard over the low murmur of the crowd, and instantly the mass of moving heads was lifted to the mount, and the sea of faces flashed white under the heaviness of the sky.

"Daniel Mylrea," said the Bishop, "it is not for us to know if any hidden circumstance lessens the hideousness of your crime. Against all questions concerning your motive your lips have been sealed, and we who are your earthly judges are compelled to take you at the worst. But if, in the fulness of your remorse, your silence conceals what would soften your great offense, be sure that your Heavenly Judge, who reads your heart, sees all. You have taken a precious life; you have spilled the blood of one who bore himself so meekly and lovingly and with such charity before the world that the hearts of all men were drawn to him. And you, who slew him in heat or malice, you he ever loved with a great tenderness. Your guilt is confessed, your crime is black, and now your punishment is sure."

The crowd held its breath while the Bishop spoke, but the guilty man moaned feebly and his bowed head swayed to and fro.

"Daniel Mylrea, there is an everlasting sacredness in human life, and God who gave it guards it jealously. When man violates it, God calls for vengeance, and if we who are His law-givers on earth shut our ears to that cry of the voice of God, His fierce anger goes forth as a whirlwind and His word as a fire upon all men. Woe unto us if now we sin against the Lord by falling short of the punishment that He has ordered. Righteously, and without qualm of human mercy, even as God has commanded, we, His servants, must execute judgment on the evil-doer, lest His wrath be poured out upon this island itself, upon man and upon beast, and upon the fruit of the ground."

At that word the deep murmur broke out afresh over the people, and under the low sky their upturned faces were turned to a grim paleness. And now a strange light came into the eyes of the Bishop, and his deep voice quavered.

"Daniel Mylrea," he continued, "it is not the way of God's worse chastisement to take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and to spill blood for blood that has been spilled. When the sword of the Lord goes forth it is sometimes to destroy the guilty man, and sometimes to cut him off from the land of the living, to banish him to the parched places of the wilderness, to end the days wherein his sleep shall be sweet to him, to blot out his name from the names of men, and to give him no burial at the last when the darkness of death shall cover him."

The Bishop paused. There was a dreadful silence, and the distant sea sent up into the still air, under the low clouds that reverberated like a vault, a hoarse, threatening murmur:

"Daniel Mylrea, you are not to die for your crime."

At that ill-omened word the prisoner staggered like a drunken man, and lifted his right hand mechanically above his head, as one who would avert a blow. And now it was easy to see in the wild light in the eyes of the Bishop, and to hear in his hollow, tense voice, that the heart of the father was wrestling with the soul of the priest, and that every word that condemned the guilty man made its sore wound on the spirit of him that uttered it.