level examination of Judge Mann. "I am Callista Blake."

Judge Mann opened the record book and wrote: State vs. Blake, Dec. 7,
1959. Eighteen days to Christmas and he still hadn't bought that Diesel
train for David, his brother Jack's youngest.... The Blake girl sat
down, Warner on her other side where his bulk might partly shield her
from the assault of eyes. She moved with grace, the deformity a nothing;
the disturbing grace of a wild thing--a cat, a snake, a soaring bird,
who makes never one waste motion but appears to flow with no instant of
transition known. On the scratch-pad Mann's pencil labored through the
fussiness of Old English script:Which is the Clerk? He said: "If you're ready, Mr. Hunter, we can choose a jury." The squirrel-cage squeaked. Mr. Delehanty called: "Peter Anson." The bald stubby man waddling forward looked neither calloused nor hypersensitive. Thirtyish; young enough not to be too congealed in acquired prejudices, old enough to have rubbed off some of the certainties the young must use in place of experience. Mann imagined for him a cute pink-and-white wife, two kids, mortgage, Chevvy. Anson might do. As Mr. Delehanty called more names, Mann ripped off the top sheet of the doodle-pad, to bury it in the minute-book instead of the wastebasket. Never mind Mr. Delehanty's feelings. Some later page might show only cats, mermaids, stripteasers--he could have that one. Relaxed and genial, T. J. Hunter spoke to the potential jurors as well as to those first called: "I'm Talbot Hunter, assistant district attorney who will try this case. Judge Terence Mann is presiding. At the other table is Mr. Cecil Warner, defense counsel, and beside him is the defendant Callista Blake. She's not a resident of Shanesville, by the way, though she lived there till about a year ago. I don't think any of you come from Shanesville--very nice town, about three miles beyond the city line." Mann drew a lightning sketch of the Governor's mansion and wrote: Nice town, but alas, T. J., wrong county! "Callista Blake is the daughter, by an earlier marriage, of Mrs. Herbert Chalmers of Shanesville. Callista's father, Kramer Blake, died in 1947. In 1951 her mother married Dr. Herbert Chalmers, Associate Professor of English at our own Winchester College. Miss Blake lived in Shanesville until July of last year when she took an apartment by herself here in Winchester--21 Covent Street. Then, and up to the time of her arrest, she was employed by a portrait photographer, Miss Edith Nolan--" "Still is," said a thin red-haired woman among the spectators. Mann's rap with the gavel was reflex action. "That can't be permitted." The redhead sat frozen in evident astonishment at herself. 

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