"Please proceed."

"When she got inside, she turned around and smiled. It looked as if she was laughing at me. Then she reached out and touched his arm. She—she—"

"Please speak louder. She what?"

"She took him inside and shut the door."

Heaped silence greeted the words. Men turned quietly and gazed at their wives, their eyes asking a question for the bewildered, the undecided.

"John Hastings, we have checked thoroughly. Your wife did spend the night of the fifteenth in the vacant house of which you speak. She spent the night, however, alone. Her graphs show no disturbances, no emotional exhilaration. You are perpetrating an untruth."

"I'm not. I saw it! I saw it as plainly as I can see the box in which I am standing now."

"You could not have seen it."

"Before my God, I did! I saw every detail. The yellow pannier she wore. The blue hydrangea bush on the lawn. That broken aneroid beside the door. Every detail." His voice crescendoed.

"It is impossible."

He raised his fists in the air. "Say it's impossible if you like. Repeat it a thousand times! But I saw her do it just the same!! I saw it!"

Something inside me had pulled tight. Thoughts of the classroom flooded into my mind. Long forgotten formulae, theories ... somewhere! The voice droned on, charging the jurors:

"—having reviewed the evidence—"

I kept groping toward a page in a book. Somewhere there was a piece that would fit in. "The majority ballot rules." It was going too fast for me. They were calling for the vote.

"Juror Number One, please stand and tell the court; how do you find?"

With great deliberation, he turned his back on the defendant in the box.

"Juror Number One designates guilt. Juror Number Two, how do you find?"

Vortler was second. He stood and gazed at John Hastings for a long moment. Then he raised his arms toward the 

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