"I wasn't eavesdropping, sir." "You're not accused of it." Warner was speaking gently. "We're only concerned with what you heard. Was there anything else?" "Well, like I said, I heard Mrs. Chalmers crying." "Can you be certain it wasn't her daughter you heard?" "Yes. Their voices are mighty different." "You had heard Mrs. Chalmers cry before?" "Yes, sir, now and then." "And Callista?" "She never cried." "Not even as a child, having tantrums?" "No, she'd just go white and--walk away, or--is it all right to say this?" "Go ahead." "Walk away, or sort of run away sometimes, I mean off into the woods or like that, and practically have to be dragged home. I thought it was--can I say this?--I don't want to say anything wrong, I--" "Go ahead, Miss Welsh." "Well, just--I thought it was real unnatural, that I never heard Callista cry." "No further questions." IV Callista sampled and pushed aside the inoffensive meal. The state of New Essex was feeding her well. Treating her well too--a star prisoner. A room of her own and, now that the trial had begun, meals in private, on a tray no less. No utensils of course except a spoon. She rose and performed the infinite journey of three steps from the barred door to the barred window a few times: shorten stride and you could make it come out to four steps. _Best room in the hotel, southwest exposure 'n' everything--gee!_ She adjusted the blanket on her cot to sharp military precision: it would make Matron Flannery happy. A pity to sit down now and spoil all that wonderful work. Anyway Biddy Flannery would be along in a minute for the tray, with her usual not unfriendly clash of keys; then back to the courtroom for the afternoon. Callista gazed at the flat-faced wall where smears of old writing had been not quite obliterated--for everything in this building was more than a little tired, peevish, ineffectual. Indifferent mop or washrag took a swipe at the graffiti, to keep busy; the law took a swipe, the best it could manage, at the perennial smears of human confusion, dishonesty, violence. High up--the woman must have been tall--enough remained of a lipstick inscription to indicate a heart symbol enclosing a pair of names: DAVY & ----: the other name had defied Callista's months-long effort to decipher it. She tried again now, bemused, and once more gave it up, although somehow this time she did feel a bit nearer success. It was exasperating as a sore tooth.