“But it can’t be, you know. It can’t, I say.”
“So far as Richard’s innocence goes, of that I have long been convinced,” spoke Mr. Carlyle.
“And that Levison’s guilty?” returned the justice, opening his eyes in puzzled wonderment.
“I have no opinion upon that point,” was the cold rejoinder.
“It’s impossible, I say. Dick can’t be innocent. You may as well tell me that the world’s turned upside down.”
“It is, sometimes, I think. That Richard was not the guilty man will be proved yet, justice, in the broad face of day.”
“If—if—that other did do it, I should think you’d take the warrant out of the hands of the police and capture him yourself.”
“I would not touch him with a pair of tongs,” spoke Mr. Carlyle, his lips curling again. “If the man goes to his punishment, he goes; but I do not help him on his road thither.”
“Can Dick be innocent?” mused the justice, returning to the thought which so troubled his mind. “Then why has he kept away? Why did he not come back and say so?”
“That you might deliver him up, justice. You know you took an oath to do it.”