The drawing frightened her then in a different way, grown temporarily larger than her mind's resistance. These people were all looking at her, as the twelve faces of flesh and blood had seemed to for a moment in the afternoon, when someone in the row behind her had a loud coughing spell. They looked at her now, bloated Hoag and ancient Emerson Lake and cloth-brained Emma Beales and kindly Helen Butler, and by a trick of her exhausted mind they made her no longer Edith Nolan but a woman at the defense table, whose life would end or begin afresh somehow according to the will of those twelve imperfect beings. Who meant well; who wanted to "do the right thing," whatever that was; who (except maybe Hoag) wouldn't dream of turpentining a dog or pulling the wings off flies or starving a child. She forced herself out of that illusion. Well, the illusion was at least fair evidence of power in the work. She warned herself: _Discount everything: tired; the illusion is strong because of personal involvement in People vs. Blake; by morning the pen-and-ink may be ashes._ But leaving it, turning out the light, Edith almost knew that it would not. And she marveled, with something like the wonder of a child to whom all discovery is fresh and nothing worn down to the stale and bromidic, at the stubborn power of life to draw out of mold and decay an oak tree or a flower; out of confusion or sorrow a work of enduring good. 5 It is indeed some Excuse to be mad with the greater Part of Mankind. ERASMUS, _Colloquies_ I Answering T. J. Hunter's inquiry about her occupation, Mrs. Phelps Jason of Shanesville replied in her own time and manner: "I am a widow with a limited private income, not employed in the usual sense, certainly not unemployed in the sense of idle. I manage my Shanesville property as a wild life sanctuary, and am Secretary of the Winchester County Anti-Vivisection League." Judge Mann exhaled. One of those; human, however. In the minute-book, belatedly, he entered the date, December 9, and the witness's name. On the pad he sketched a dour bluejay cuddling field glasses. "Mrs. Jason, how did you spend the afternoon of Friday, August 7th?" She made no fussy business of verifying the date. "On that day I attended a picnic given by my neighbors, Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Chalmers." "Who were the others present, if you recall?" "Besides Dr. and Mrs. Chalmers, there were Mr. and Mrs. James Doherty, Mr. Nathaniel Judd, and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Wayne of Shanesville with their two children. Also Miss Maud Welsh and Callista Blake." "Are you well acquainted with the defendant, Callista Blake?"