Brief as the message was, the clerk at the counter could hardly decipher the agitated handwriting.
A few minutes later he was at the Police-office, asking the Chief Constable for an order to allow him, as Bessie's advocate, to see her alone in her cell.
At two o'clock he was back at the railway-station, taking the train for Castletown. As he stepped into his carriage the newsboys were calling the contents of the evening paper:
Glorious! Bessie would have a human being on the bench. Thank God for that anyway!
"I don't know what you are talking about--I really don't. You make me laugh. Whatever will you say next! I was ill and I came home to have my mother nurse me, and that was all I knew until Cain, the constable, came to bring me here."
It was Bessie before the High Bailiff. Her face was thin and pale, and she was clutching the rail of the dock in an effort to keep herself erect, while her shrill voice echoed to the roof.
The magistrate was about to commit her to prison when Dr. Clucas rose in the body of the Court-house.
"Your worship," he said (his voice was husky and his eyes had a look of tears), "the defendant is suffering from the temporary mania which is not unusual in such cases. I suggest that she should be sent to the hospital."
Bessie fainted. The next thing she knew was that she was in bed in a hospital ward, and that another doctor (a younger man with thin hair and a large pugnacious mouth) was leaning over her, and laying his hand on her breast. She pushed it off, and then he said, in an authoritative tone,
"My good woman, if you are innocent, as you say, the best proof you can give is that of a medical examination."
"If you touch me again," she cried, "I'll tear your eyes out!"
Then she fainted once more, and for two days lay in a strong delirium. When she came to herself a nurse with a kind face was by her side, saying "Hush!" and doing something at her breast with a glass instrument.
She knew she had been delirious (having a vague memory of crying "Alick! Alick!" as she returned to consciousness) and was in fear of what she might have said.
She dare not ask whom, but lay wondering if Alick knew where she was and what had happened to her. After a while she said,