"I must see you again to-morrow night in some secret place. Where shall it be?"
"Why not the Miss Browns' at Derby Haven? They'll hold their tongues. They owe me something."
"Very well, eight o'clock, Sunday night," said Stowell, and he rose to go.
"What a good fellow...." began Gell again, but Stowell looked at him and he stopped.
The Deemster's Court had to wait for the Deemster. When he arrived with a patch of plaster on his cheek-bone, he told Joshua Scarff that he had accidentally knocked his face against a gas-bracket and had had to go to a chemist to get the wound dressed.
It was an intricate case he tried that day, but the advocates engaged in it said he had never before been so cool, so clear, so collected.
"After all, the Governor knew what he was doing," they told themselves.
That night, Saturday night, after a furtive visit to the tavern on the quay, Gell slipped through the back streets to the railway station and leapt into the last train for the north as the carriages were leaving the platform.
He was going home to say good-bye to his mother—not with his tongue, for he had no hope of speaking to her, but with his eyes and his heart. If he could only see her for a moment before leaving the island!
It was late when he reached the lane to his father's house, and the night was dark, for it was the time between the going and the coming of two moons.