"A little over a year."
"And why did you leave?"
"Well, it was on account of an accident."
"What kind of an accident?"
And here Clyde, previously prepared and drilled as to all this plunged into the details which led up to and included the death of the little girl and his flight—which Mason, true enough, had been intending to bring up. But, now, as he listened to all this, he merely shook his head and grunted ironically, "He'd better go into all that," he commented. And Jephson, sensing the import of what he was doing—how most likely he was, as he would have phrased it, "spiking" one of Mr. Mason's best guns, continued with:
"How old were you then, Clyde, did you say?"
"Between seventeen and eighteen."
"And do you mean to tell me," he continued, after he had finished with all of the questions he could think of in connection with all this, "that you didn't know that you might have gone back there, since you were not the one who took the car, and after explaining it all, been paroled in the custody of your parents?"
"Object!" shouted Mason. "There's no evidence here to show that he could have returned to Kansas City and been paroled in the custody of his parents."
"Objection sustained!" boomed the judge from his high throne. "The defense will please confine itself a little more closely to the letter of the testimony."