At sight of this the girl got up and began to scream. "Father! Father! Father!"
The blood was rising in the mother's pallid face. "Collister," she cried, "if thou touch the girl again, I'll walk straight out of thy house."
"Walk, woman! Do as you plaze! But I must know who brought disgrace on my name. Who was it?"
The mother stepped to the door. "Collister," she repeated, "for fourteen years thou's done as thou liked with me, and I've been giving thee lave to do it, but lay another hand on my child..."
"No, no, don't go, mother. I'll tell him," cried the girl. "It was .... it was Alick Gell."
"That's good enough for me," said Dan, and then, with another snort, half bitter and half triumphant, he tossed the strap on to the table, went out of the house and into the stable.
An hour afterwards, in his billycock hat and blue suit of Manx homespun, he was driving his market-cart up the long, straight, shaded lane to the Speaker's ivy-covered mansion-house, with the gravelled courtyard in front of it, in which two or three peacocks strutted and screamed.
The Speaker had only just returned from Douglas. There had been a sitting of the Keys that day and he had hurried home to tell his wife an exciting story. It was about the Deemster. The big man was down--going down anyway!
Archibald Gell was a burly, full-bearded man of a high complexion. Although he belonged to what we called the "aristocracy" of the island, the plebeian lay close under his skin. Rumour said he was subject to paralysing brain-storms, and that he could be a foul-mouthed man in his drink. But he was generally calm and nearly always sober.
His ruling passion was a passion for power, and his fiercest lust was a lust of popularity. The Deemster was his only serious rival in either, and therefore the object of his deep and secret jealousy. He was jealous of the Deemster's dignity and influence, but above all (though he had hitherto hidden it even from himself) of his son.
Stooping over the fire in the drawing-room to warm his hands after his long journey, he was talking, with a certain note of self-congratulation, of what he had heard in Douglas. That ugly incident at King William's had come to a head! The Stowell boy had been expelled, and the Deemster had had to drive into town to fetch him home. He, the Speaker, had not seen him there, but Cæsar Qualtrough had. Cæsar was a nasty customer to cross (he had had experience of the man himself), and in the smoking-room at the Keys he had bragged of what he could have done. He could have put the Deemster's son in jail! Yes, ma'am, in jail! If he had had a mind for it young Stowell might have slept at Castle Rushen instead of Ballamoar to-night. And if he hadn't, why hadn't he? Cæsar wouldn't say, but everybody knew--he had a case coming on in the Courts presently!