When the trial was resumed the Attorney-General had not returned to
court, so Hudgeon represented the Crown. He was offensive from the
first, but Gell, whose spirits had risen perceptibly, was not to be
put out.
The witness he called first was Mrs. Collister. The old mother had
to be helped into the witness-box. Her poor face was wet with recent
tears, and in administering the oath Stowell hardly dared to look at
her. Remembering the admissions she had made to him at Ballamoar he
knew that she had come to give false evidence in her daughter's cause.
She made a timid, reluctant and sometimes inaudible witness. More
than once Hudgeon complained that he could not hear, and Gell, with
great tenderness, asked her to speak louder.
"Speak up, Mrs. Collister. There's nothing to fear. The Court will
protect you," he said. But Stowell, who saw what was hidden behind
the veil of the old woman's soul, knew it was another and higher
audience she was afraid of.
With many pauses she repeated, in answer to Gell's questions, the
story she had told before--that her daughter had returned home ill on
the fifth of April, that she had put her to bed in the dairy-loft and
that the girl had never left it until Cain the constable came to
arrest her.
"You saw her day and night while she was at your house?"
"Aw, yes, Sir, last thing at night and first thing in the morning."
"And you know nothing that conflicts with what she says--that she
never had a child and therefore could not have killed it?"
"'Deed no, Sir, nothing whatever."
She had answered in a tremulous voice which the Deemster found deeply
affecting. Once or twice she had lifted her weak eyes to his with a
pitiful look of supplication, and he had had to turn his own eyes
away. "I should do it myself," he thought.
"And now, Mrs. Collister," said Gell, "if you were here this morning
you heard what the Attorney-General said--that your daughter had been
of a lawless disposition and had run away from home without apparent
reason. Is there any truth in that?"
"Bessie was always a good girl, Sir. It was lies the gentleman was
putting on her."
"Is the prisoner your husband's daughter?"
"No, Sir," the old woman faltered, "his step-daughter."
"Is it true that her step-father has always been hard on her?"