"The law has already condemned him," I reminded him. "The situation is difficult. He is not a man merely accused, his defense unpresented. He has been tried, convicted, and sentenced."
"Good heavens!" he gasped. "Then if he puts himself in the hands of the law, there will be nothing left but to see the execution of the sentence? Is that what you mean?"
"Yes. That is the situation. There have been cases where men who had escaped from prison have lived for years exemplary lives and reached civic honors, yet, when recognized and apprehended, they had to go back to prison and serve out the unexpired sentence of the man condemned years before."
"But if the sentence was unwarranted?"
"Of course we would try to make a fight on it," I said, but without much confidence. "But the sentence was pronounced by a duly qualified court, and it will not be easy to upset it at this late day. It would be a thousand times harder now to find any evidence there may be in his favor than it could have been then, when the events were fresh in the memory of everybody. And unless we can discover some new evidence having a bearing on the matter, we would have no ground on which to ask for a re-opening of the case."
"That's terrible," he said. Then, dropping his voice, "Is the death penalty in force there?"
I nodded.
"The man was a fool to hang around home," Whyte protested energetically, as he took the situation in. "Why didn't he have sense enough to go to South America or Africa, or the South Sea Islands when he first escaped?"
As if in answer to his question, the library door opened, and Katherine Thurston stood framed in the doorway. She had the same curiously still air that I had noticed when she stood on the stairs,--as though her spirit had found the way into a region of mysterious peace.
"He has gone," she said quietly.