"Come in, my boy. Sit down. Take a cigarette. I have important 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 off 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.