But last summer, even the supreme court managed to arrive at a decision at last.  Once more the original verdict was sustained.  Christian then said he was satisfied; but Stavely was present, and whispered to him and to his lawyer, suggesting, “as a mere form,” that the original law be exhibited, in order to make sure that it still existed.  It seemed an odd idea, but an ingenious one.  So the demand was made.  A messenger was sent to the magistrate’s house; he presently returned with the tidings that it had disappeared from among the state archives.

The court now pronounced its late decision void, since it had been made under a law which had no actual existence.

Great excitement ensued immediately.  The news swept abroad over the whole island that the palladium of the public liberties was lost—­maybe treasonably destroyed.  Within thirty minutes almost the entire nation were in the court-room—­that is to say, the church.  The impeachment of the chief magistrate followed, upon Stavely’s motion.  The accused met his misfortune with the dignity which became his great office.  He did not plead, or even argue; he offered the simple defense that he had not meddled with the missing law; that he had kept the state archives in the same candle-box that had been used as their depository from the beginning; and that he was innocent of the removal or destruction of the lost document.

But nothing could save him; he was found guilty of misprision of treason, and degraded from his office, and all his property was confiscated.

The lamest part of the whole shameful matter was the reason suggested by his enemies for his destruction of the law, to wit:  that he did it to favor Christian, because Christian was his cousin!  Whereas Stavely was the only individual in the entire nation who was not his cousin.  The reader must remember that all these people are the descendants of half a dozen men; that the first children intermarried together and bore grandchildren to the mutineers; that these grandchildren intermarried; after them, great and great-great-grandchildren intermarried; so that to-day everybody is blood kin to everybody.  Moreover, the relationships are wonderfully, even astoundingly, mixed up and complicated.  A stranger, for instance, says to an islander: 

“You speak of that young woman as your cousin; a while ago you called her your aunt.”

“Well, she is my aunt, and my cousin, too.  And also my stepsister, my niece, my fourth cousin, my thirty-third cousin, my forty-second cousin, my great-aunt, my grandmother, my widowed sister-in-law—­and next week she will be my wife.”