No one spoke. Occasionally there came from without the mournful cry of the gulls flying over the harbour, and, at one moment, the ululation of a crew of Irish sailors who were weighing anchor on a schooner in the bay.
The profound silence around only made louder the thunder in Stowell's soul. He knew he was at the crisis of his life. On what he did now the future of his life depended.
The address to the Jury had been a fearful ordeal, but the sentence would be terrible. To sentence Bessie Collister, having been the first cause of her crime—could he do it? It might only be a formal sentence (the Crown being certain to commute the punishment), but the awful words prescribed by the Statute—would they not choke in his very throat?
And then Fenella! Her voice was ringing in his ears still:
"Shame on him! Let no good man own him for a friend! Let no good woman take him for a husband!"
"And what will be the end?" he asked himself.
He heard the door open behind him. A low hum of voices came down the staircase from the Court-house. There was a footstep on the carpeted floor. Somebody by his side was speaking. It was Joshua Scarff.
"The Jury are ready to return to Court, your Honour."
IV
When Stowell resumed his seat on the bench, and the buzz of conversation had subsided, he was conscious of the presence of only three persons besides himself—Bessie in the dock with Fenella by her side, and Alick Gell, with distorted face and wig a little awry, in the bench in front of them.