"That's personal, and I won't stand it," cried the landowner, and then there were loud shouts with much smiting of the table.
In the midst of the tumult a quiet voice was heard to say,
"Hadn't we better lay this matter before the Lord, brothers?"
It was a northside farmer and local preacher, who (not always to his financial advantage) had made it the rule of his life, whether in the reaping of his corn or the sowing of his turnips, to wait for Divine guidance. In another moment he was on his knees, and one by one his fellow-jurymen, including the long landowner, had slithered down after him.
When they rose they were apparently of one opinion—that inasmuch as nobody except God knew why Bessie had killed her child (being alone and under the cloud of night) the only thing to do was to leave her to the Lord.
Meantime Gell, with restless and irregular footsteps, was striding about in the court-yard. Fenella's outburst had fallen on him like a flash of lightning in the darkness. Everything had suddenly become clear—all the vague fears that had haunted him so long, the suspicions he had thrust behind his back, the facts he had been unable to understand. What a blind fool he had been!
Stowell! His life-long friend, on whose word he would have staked his soul! There must have been a conspiracy to deceive him. Both Stowell and Bessie had been in it—Stowell to get rid of the girl he no longer wanted, and Bessie to cover up her disgrace by marrying him. What a plot! The woman he had loved and the man he had worshipped! He saw himself hoodwinked by both of them, lied to, perhaps laughed at. His life, his faith, his love had crashed down in a moment. It was too cruel, too damnable!
The air was chill, though the sun was shining, but Gell took off his wig and carried it in his hand, for his head seemed to be afire.
After a time the hatred he had felt for Bessie became centred, with a hundredfold intensity, upon Stowell. Even if Bessie had begun with an intention of betraying him, she must have repented of it afterwards, and committed her crime, poor girl, because (as Fenella had said) she had come to love him. But Stowell had carried on his deception to the last moment. He was carrying it on now, when he was sitting in judgment on his own victim. He meant to sentence her to death, too. Yes, under all his fine phrases it was easy to see that he meant to sentence her. But if he did so Gell would murder him.
"Yes, by God, I'll murder him," he thought.