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 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?"