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In the witness-box a young man was standing, and his head was down. The man had delivered the woman to dishonour; she had attempted her life in her shame and her despair. And looking on the man, the Deemster thought he spoke in a stern voice, saying, "Witness, I am compelled to punish her, but oh to heaven that I could punish you in her place! What have you to say for yourself?"
Half helped, half dragged by constables, she entered the prisoner's dock. There she clutched the bar before her as if to keep herself from falling. Her head was bent down between her shrinking shoulders as if she were going through the agony of shame and degradation. "The woman shouldn't have been brought here like this quick, be quick," said the Deemster. The evidence was brief.
Remembering the crime that he had so nearly committed, he was holding himself in horror. His friend! His life-long friend! His only friend! The Deemster no longer, but only the man. Not the man either, but the child. The cruel years had rolled back with all their burden of trouble. Forgotten days were come again days long buried under the débris of memory. They were boys together again.
Never in the whole range of literature have we seen the struggle between these forces for supremacy over the man more powerfully, more realistically delineated than Mr. Caine pictures it." Boston Home Journal. THE DEEMSTER. A Romance of the Isle of Man. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
The son would regain all that his father had lost! He had gifts, and he should be brought up to the law; a large nature, and he should be helped to develop it; a fine face which all must love, a sense of justice, and a great wealth of the power of radiating happiness. Deemster? Why not? Ballawhaine? Who could tell? The biggest, noblest, greatest of all Manxmen! God knows!
He was walking to Kirk Michael to visit the old Deemster, who was ill. Would he not take a lift? He hesitated, half declined, and then got into the gig. As she settled herself comfortably after this change, he trod on the edge of her dress. At that he drew quickly away as if he had trodden on her foot.
His talk was bitter, his voice cold, he laughed little, and had never been known to cry. He had many things against him. Besides these sons, Deemster Christian had a girl in his household, but to his own consciousness the fact was only a kind of peradventure. She was his niece, the child of his only brother, who had died in early manhood.
The office of Deemster never has been and never can be hereditary; yet the Christians of Ballawhaine had been Deemsters through six generations, and old Iron Christian expected that Thomas Wilson Christian would succeed him.
On leaving his own rooms he had not forgotten to order supper for eight o'clock precisely. He found the Governor polite and expansive as usual. He was sitting in a room hung round with ponderous portraits of former Governors, most of them in frills and ruffles, and one vast picture of King George. "You will have heard," he said, "that our northern Deemster is dead." "Is he so?" said Philip.
To relieve his restlessness by giving way to it, he went out to walk. It was the end of the tourist season, and the Ben-my-Chree was leaving the harbour. Newsboys, burrowing among the crowds on the pier to sell a Manx evening paper, were crying, "Illness of the Deemster serious reports." Philip's hair seemed to rise from his head. The two things came together in his mind.
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