"Do you think we have a chance?" "Of course we have a chance. Today was bad. They'll go on feeling Judd's collapse, in spite of common sense, in spite of everything. The poor guy couldn't have done us more harm if he'd been trying. T.J. will manage to drop in some apparently inadvertent reminder of it, no doubt in his closing speech when I'm done talking--hell, mere mention of Judd's name in a baritone tremolo would be enough, and there's no legal barrier against that. Terence will charge the jury again to forget it, and most of them will honestly try to, which would mean something only if people knew how to watch their own minds. And today was bad because this was the day when they laid out the heavy circumstantial stuff, proving your episode with Jim, making it official on the aconite, all that. But now, dear, so far as evidence is concerned, T.J. has finished, done his worst. Those letters to be read tomorrow aren't evidence. T.J. just thinks they are. He'll try to interpret them as indicating premeditation as well as motive; I know better, and I think I can make that fly up and hit him in the face, in my own closing speech or sooner. I'm not painting it bright for you, Callista. It's not bright. But we have a chance. There is this: with your story clearly told--as it has been already, really, in that Lamson interrogation--it passes my understanding how anyone in his right mind could find first degree." "Mr. Lamson had the answer. Remember?--'the fact is, my dear girl, we just don't believe your story.'" "Hell with Butch Lamson--he's not the jury." "You think they might find second degree?" "That could happen. The only just verdict would be involuntary man-slaughter." "My love, can't you hear me? I've told you, I am guilty. Twenty to life. What do people feel when they cry out 'O God! O God!'--does the sound do something for them?" "I don't know, Callista. I was never religious. Were you, ever?"