“Miss Sadie Burch!” repeated Mr. Tutt.  “And who is she?”

“Nobody knows,” said Miss Wiggin.  “But whoever she is, our responsibility stops with advising Mr. Payson Clifford that the letter has no legal effect.  Mr. Tutt went further and tried to induce Mr. Clifford not to respect the request contained in it.  That, it seems to me, is going too far.  Don’t you think so?”

“Are you certain you never heard of this Miss Burch?” suddenly asked Mr. Tutt, peering at her sharply from beneath his shaggy eyebrows.

“Never,” she replied.

“H’m!” ejaculated Mr. Tutt.  “A woman in the case!”

“What sort of a young fellow is this Payson Clifford?” inquired Miss Wiggin after a moment.

“Oh, not so much of a much!” answered Mr. Tutt whimsically.

“And what was the father like?” she continued with a woman’s curiosity.

“He wasn’t so much of a much, either, evidently,” answered Mr. Tutt.

We have previously had occasion to comment upon the fact that no client, male or female, consults a lawyer with regard to what he ought to do.  Women, often having decided to do that which they ought not to do, attempt to secure counsel’s approval of the contemplated sin; but while a lawyer is sometimes called upon to bolster up a guilty conscience, rarely is he sincerely invited to act as spiritual adviser.  Most men being worse than their lawyers, prefer not to have the latter find them out.  If they have made up their minds to do a mean thing they do not wish to run the chance of having their lawyer shame them out of it.  That is their own business.  And it should be!  The law presents sufficiently perplexing problems for the lawyer without his seeking trouble in the dubious complexities of his client’s morals!  Anyhow, that is the regulation way a lawyer looks at it and that is the way to hold one’s clients.  Do what you are instructed to do—­so long as it isn’t too raw!  Question the propriety of his course and while your client may follow your advice in this single instance he probably will not return again.

The paradoxical aspect of the matter with Mr. Tutt was that while he was known as a criminal lawyer whenever he was asked for advice he concerned himself quite as much with his client’s moral as his legal duty.  The rather subtle reason for this was probably to be found in the fact that since he found the law so easy to circumvent he preferred to disregard it entirely as a sanction of conduct and merely to ask himself “Now is this what a sportsman and a gentleman would do?” The fact that a man was a technical criminal meant nothing to him at all; what interested him was whether the man was or was not a “mean” man.  If he was, to hell with him!  In a word, he applied to any given situation the law as it ought to be and not the law as it was.  A very easy and flexible test! say you, sarcastically.  Do you really think so?  There may be forty different laws upon the same subject in as many different states