"It runs out a year to-day, Sir, and Willie Kerruish, the advocate, was telling me at the Michaelmas mart you were not for renewing it. Do you still hould to that, Mr. Spaker?"
"Certainly I do," said the Speaker. "I don't want to enter into discussions, but I think you'll be the better for another landlord and I for another tenant."
There was another moment of silence, broken only by Dan's nasal breathing, and then he said:
"Mr. Spaker, the Dempster's son has come home in disgrace, they're saying."
"What's that got to do with it?" said the Speaker.
"My daughter has come home in disgrace, too--my wife's daughter, I mane."
Mrs. Gell raised herself in her easy chair. "Was it your girl, then..." she began.
"It was, ma'am. Bessie Corteen--Collister, they're calling her."
"What's all this to me?" said the Speaker.
"She's telling me it's a mistake about the Dempster's son, Sir. It was somebody else's lad did the mischief."
"I see you are well informed," said the Speaker. "Well, what of it?"
"Cæsar Qualtrough might have prosecuted but he didn't, out of respect for the Dempster," said Dan.
"But if somebody gave him a scute into the truth he mightn't be so lenient with another man--one other anyway."
"There have been bits of breezes in the Kays, they're telling me."
"Cæsar and me were middling well acquaint when I was milling at Ballabeg and he was hutching at Port St. Mary--in fact we were same as brothers."
"I see what you mean to do, Mr. Collister," said the Speaker, "but you can save yourself the trouble. My lad is in this house now if you want to know, but I'm sending him to sea, and before you can get to Castletown he will have left the island."
"And what will the island say to that, Sir?" said Dan. "That Archibald Gell, Spaker of the Kays, chairman of everything, and the biggest man going, barring the Dempster, has had to send his son away to save him from the lock-up."
The Speaker took two threatening strides forward, and Dan rose to his feet. There was silence again as the two men stood face to face, but this time it was broken by the Speaker's breathing also. Then he turned aside and said, with a shamefaced look:
"I'll hear what Kerruish has to say. I have to see him in the morning."