Sibley stared at him above his wilted tie. “Well,” he said quietly, “I don’t know whether to express their opinion, but of course we have talked it over, and I think I can say I have never seen anything like it.” Thayer looked down scornfully, turned on his heel, and walked away. * * * * * As the defendants arrived for the afternoon session and the courtroom filled, Rosina and Dante were allowed briefly inside the cage. While Sacco talked to his wife, Vanzetti rumpled the boy’s hair playfully, his deep eyes glowing, a smile wrinkling across his face. The jury was brought in, polled, and then retired. The defendants were again led away. Lawyers, reporters, and most of the spectators went outside. Those wise in the ways of juries did not expect a verdict until after the evening meal. Sheriff Capen predicted five hours. It was then three o’clock. Much in the preceding weeks had seemed a legal game, but now the verbiage had been swept away, leaving nothing but the bone-bare interlude like time suspended, a feeling somehow intensified by the paper-littered courtroom and the ticking marble-faced clock and the summer brightness filtering through the maple trees. * * * * * From the courtroom the sheriff led the jurymen down the corridor to a room on the left with the word jury stenciled on the frosted glass of the door. He closed the door behind them and locked it. They found themselves alone in a room containing nothing but a long table and twelve leather-cushioned chairs. Another door at the side led to the lavatory. John Dever noticed that all the doorknobs had the county seal embossed on them. In their six weeks of close association the twelve men had developed a sense of camaraderie that would bind them together for the rest of their lives. Over thirty years later, Dever, destitute in a veteran’s hospital, would find himself visited by Atwood and Gerard, and there again they would talk over the case. But in this first moment of being alone no one quite knew how to begin.