In the morning Stowell went to church. In the afternoon he sat in the Library, reading in many volumes the stories of prison-breakings and escapes. He saw that in nearly every case of failure chance had played a part at the last moment, and he thought hard to foresee every possible contingency.
Towards evening he brought his car round from the garage and told Janet not to wait up for him. She had delivered Fenella's message ("Tell him to come back to me") and thought she knew where he was going to. He was going to Government House. The sweet old soul was very happy.
"I'll leave the piazza door on the catch, dear," she said, as he was going off into the moving shadows of the trees.
By the time he reached Castletown the mist had deepened to a fog. The broad tower of the Castle looked monstrously large and forbidding against the gloom of the sky, and the fog-horn of the light-house on Langness was blowing with a measured and melancholy sound across the unseen sea.
Coming upon a tholthan (a ruined cottage) by the roadside he ran his car into it, and then walked into the town.
The little place was once the capital of the island, and still retained many of its primitive characteristics. There were no lamps in the streets, which were therefore quite dark. Only a few of the houses gave out light, for the younger children were already in bed, and their parents were trooping to church or chapel.
The church bells were ringing. Save for that, and the footsteps of his fellow pedestrians who walked in the darkness beside him, Stowell heard nothing but the blowing of the far-off fog-horn. Everything favoured his design. "It was meant to be," he told himself.
Nevertheless he was conscious of making his steps light and of trying to escape observation. He took the least frequented thoroughfares, so that he might walk fast and not be recognised, but in a narrow lane that ran along under the Castle he came upon a pitiful spectacle and was compelled to stop.
An elderly woman, wearing little except her nightdress, with her feet bare and her long grey hair hanging loose, was kneeling on the paved way and praying.
"Oh Lord, as Thou didst send Thine angel to take Peter out of prison, send him now to take my poor girl out of the Castle."