"How's the rheumatism this morning, Auntie Kitty?"
"Aw, better, your Honour, a taste better to-day. But it's moral sorry I am to hear the bad newses you've had yourself, Sir. It's feeling it terrible you'll be, your Honour—you and the young man being the same as brothers. It will kill his mother—and her such a proud stomach. The woman couldn't see the sun for the boy, and she's been fighting the father all his life for him."
On his way back he met Cain, the constable, looking large and important.
"I'm sarching for them two runaways," he said, with his short asthmatical breathing, "and the Chief Constable is telling me I'll have to be finding them if they're lying like a toad under a stone."
Gell again! The report of the escape had passed over the island with the swift flight of a bird of prey—everywhere he could hear the flapping of its wings. And to the question of who could have assisted the young woman to escape from a place like Castle Rushen there was only one answer—Gell.
Towards nightfall Joshua Scarff called at Ballamoar on his way home from town. Things had turned out as he had expected—suspicion had fastened on Mr. Gell, and the Governor had ordered the police to scour the island for him.
"But everybody is sorry for your Honour. His friend! His bosom friend! Pity! Great pity!"
Gell! Always Gell! Again Stowell felt as if the earth were rocking beneath him. Where had his head been that he had not thought of this before—that in helping Alick Gell to go away with Bessie Collister he had put him into the position of the guilty man—guilty not only of the prison-breaking, but also of the earlier and uglier offence of being the girl's fellow-sinner?
He had thought he had buried his sin in the sea—had he only cast the burden of it upon Gell?
He recalled Alick's gratitude on going away, the undeserved praises which had cut to the heart, and then thought of Gell (far away in a foreign country) coming to hear of the evil name he had left behind.