One day it occurred to me to ask Fellows if he was keeping up my advertisement for Mary Doherty, from which I had heard nothing so far. His start and confusion were an obvious confession.

"N-no, not now. I did run it several times."

"I told you to keep it in until further orders. Don\'t you remember?"

He did not answer. I could not understand his manner.

"I am sorry if you didn\'t understand. We have probably lost an opportunity,--certainly have lost time. I count on getting important information from Mrs. Barker, if we can find her."

"What sort of information?" asked Fellows doggedly. I thought he was trying to minimize the results of his neglect.

"Well, almost any information that would enable us to fix Barker\'s associates would probably be valuable. More particularly, I want to find out whether there is anyone who wants to marry her and couldn\'t while Barker was alive."

I succeeded in attracting Fellows\' attention, at least. He stared at me in silence, as though he were turning the thought over.

"I\'ll advertise again," he said, but without enthusiasm.

I think it was that day that I had a disconcerting interview with Burleigh, the editor of the Saintsbury Samovar. I have mentioned, I believe, that some independent public-spirited citizens were trying to make Clyde run for mayor. (It was one of those anti-ring waves of reform which strike a city once in so often, and are temporarily successful because good business men work at them for a season. The success is seldom, if ever, more than temporary, because the good business men go back to their jobs as soon as things are running smoothly, while the ring politicians never really drop their jobs for a minute.)

Well, Clyde had cold-shouldered the proposition, but rather half-heartedly. Probably there is no man living who does not have some political ambition. Certainly Clyde had it. With his wide interest in public matters, his natural power over men, and his ancestry and associations, I knew that nothing but the shadow of fear at his elbow had kept him out of the political game, and I was therefore not surprised when, a few days after the Barker tragedy had ceased to occupy the upper right-hand corner of the first page of the newspapers, that space was given up to announcing that Kenneth Clyde had consented to accept the reform party\'s nomination. I sympathized with the relief which I knew lay back of the acceptance.

This was the political situation when I met Burleigh. He was the editor of the evening paper which supported the ring and damned reform, and of course I knew where he stood as regards Clyde\'s candidacy. But when he stopped me on the street that noon, he didn\'t speak of Clyde.

"Hello, how\'s the lawyerman?" he said, taking my hand where it hung by my side and shaking it without regard to my wishes in the matter.

I resented his familiarity with my hand and with my profession, but the convention of politeness, which makes it impossible for us to tell people our real feelings about them, constrained me to civility.

"Very well, thank you," I said, carelessly, and made a move to go on my way.

He turned and fell into step with me.

"I\'d like to ask what you lawyers call a hypothetical question," he said. "Just a joke, you understand,--a case some of the boys were talking about in our office. Read of it in some novel, I guess. Some said it would be that way and some said it wouldn\'t. In law, you know."

"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. ............