"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. Sometimes 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 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 newspaper from his pocket, and handing it to Stowell with a trembling hand.
It was a copy of the day's insular paper containing a paragraph which said that the continued illness of the new Deemster would probably prevent him from presiding at the forthcoming sitting of the Court of General 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 all the way. Don't tell me it's true."
Stowell 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 Practically repealed in every other country, but still capable of operation in the Isle of Man.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!