And then the Governor spoke for the first time that day.
"Maybe so," he said, "but all the same you are not fit to wipe his boots, Sir."
II
Early next morning Stowell was removed to Castle Rushen.
There was a rumour (probably inspired by the police) that he would travel by the seven o'clock train, therefore at half-past six the railway station and its approaches were full of a noisy crowd. But at ten minutes to seven the prison van, drawn by two horses, drew up at the back door under the court-house and Stowell was hustled into it.
"Come, get in, quick," said the Chief Constable (all his former deference gone), and then the van rolled away, Stowell being shut up in the windowless compartment within, while the Chief Constable and his Inspector of Police occupied the outer one with the grill.
Crossing a swing-bridge which spanned the top of the harbour, they climbed the lane to the Head until they reached the cliff road, and had the town behind them under a veil of morning mist, and the open sea in front. There had been wind overnight, and a fiery sun was blazing out of a fierce sky like the red light from the open door of a furnace.
Stowell, in his dark compartment, had not yet asked himself which way he was going. The feeling of exaltation, of doing a divinely appointed duty, which had buoyed him up during the trial, was now gone. The nullity of his past life, the hopelessness of the future had left him with the sense of being already a dead man. Two years inside the blind walls of the Castle Rushen, while the sun shone and the flowers grew and the birds sang outside, and the world went on without him—how could he live through it?
At length, having a sense of physical as well as spiritual suffocation, he tapped timidly at his door, and asked, when it was opened, if it might remain so for a few moments that he might have a breath of air.
"Certainly not," said the Chief Constable, and he clashed the door back.