"Well, what is the question?" I asked, as politely as my feelings would permit. (Funny idea people have, that a lawyer learns law for the purpose of supplying gratuitous opinions to chance acquaintances! I shouldn't think of asking Burleigh to send me the Samovar for a year, just to satisfy my curiosity!)
"Why, it's this. If a man has been convicted of murder--the man in the story was--and then makes his escape and lives somewhere else for twenty years or so, and is finally discovered and identified, how does he stand in regard to the law?"
You may guess how I felt! The hypothetical case was so exactly Clyde's case that for a moment my brain was paralyzed. I was so afraid of betraying my surprise that I did not speak. I merely nodded and smoked and kept my eyes on the ground.
"There's no statute of limitations to run on a sentence of the court, is there?" he asked, eagerly.
"No," I said, with professional deliberation. "No, if you are sure that you have your facts all straight. But you don't often get law entirely disentangled from facts, and they often have unexpected effects on a question. What novel did you get that from?"
"Oh,--I don't know. I just heard the boys talking about it, and I wondered."
But he looked so eager that I could not help feeling the question was more significant to him than mere literary curiosity would explain.
"You think, then, that there might be some element in the situation that would perhaps complicate it?" he asked.
"It is never safe to form an opinion without knowing all the facts," I said, oracularly.
"But if the facts are as I stated them,--an escape from justice after conviction, and nothing else,--then the man is still liable to the law, isn't he?"