“You know, of course,” he went on, “that I testified I was delivering eels with him the morning he was supposed to have been holding up the pay truck in Bridgewater. That’s been the terrible thing for me. I _was_ there with him all that morning long, and I couldn’t make them believe me. Sometimes I’ve asked myself, Could I have been wrong, could I have dreamed it all? Was Vanzetti really at Bridgewater? But then I know, I _know_ that I was delivering eels with him that morning. It couldn’t have been any other day, because that’s the one day Italians always eat eels, no matter what they cost. And I remember how I started out that morning to go to Vanzetti’s house. It was muddy and I forgot my rubbers. At the corner I met my father and he sent me back for them, so I was late. Vanzetti was waiting for me with the pushcart. We delivered eels until, it must have been, two o’clock. It’s funny the things you remember. I remember a two-family house where I made a mistake and went to the wrong door. When we got all through Vanzetti paid me off at the corner of Cherry Lane and Court Street. And I know that it happened that way, that it was the day before Christmas, the same day and the same time they said he was holding up the truck in Bridgewater. When I told my story in court Katzmann complimented me on learning my part so well. “I was only thirteen then and I was scared. I’d never been in a court before. Katzmann would go at me like a tiger, fire three questions at me at once. Thayer would never help me out. His face was so stern. He never said anything, but you could feel his hostility.” Brini’s wife came in with a tray, and Brini took a pile of magazines from the coffee table to make room. “Tell me,” I said, as she joined us. “If you had a friend in trouble you knew was innocent, could you lie to establish an alibi for him?” He leaned back in his chair for some seconds, frowning slightly, while his wife poured the coffee. “I thought you might ask me something like that,” he said finally. “No, I couldn’t. I suppose you wanted me to say yes, but I couldn’t. I don’t know why I couldn’t, either.” “Could you?” his wife asked me. “Yes,” I said truthfully, “I could quite easily. Under oath too.” “So could I,” she said, looking at her husband as if she thought he was being foolish.