It was out! Stowell felt as if the bed under him were rocking from the first tremor of an earthquake.
Half-an-hour later he was at breakfast downstairs. For a long time, Janet was trying to break the news to him. At last it came. The young woman who was to have been executed that morning had escaped. Joshua Scarff had had it from the Inspector at Ramsey—it was being telegraphed all over the island.
For the sake of appearances Stowell made an exclamation of surprise, despising himself for doing so and feeling as if the toast in his mouth were choking him.
"It's impossible not to be glad," said Janet, "that the poor guilty creature has escaped the gallows, but Joshua thinks things are not likely to end there."
"And what does he say?...."
"He says she must have had an accomplice, and when the man is found out it will be the worse for both of them."
"And who .... who does Joshua think...."
"Alick Gell. It seems he put appearances against himself at the trial, poor boy!"
Instead of going to town that day, as he had intended to do, Stowell rambled through the trackless Curraghs. He was trying to be alone with the melancholy swish of the sally bushes and the mournful cry of the curlews. But his anxiety to know what was being done brought him back to the house. Hearing nothing there, he walked to the village for a copy of the insular newspaper. He found some excuse for speaking to everybody he met on the road—on other subjects, though, always on other subjects.
At the door of the little general store, with its mixed odour of many condiments coming out to him, he stopped and called,