Mr. Picton, for his part, wasn’t fooled by the seemingly innocent, humble way that Mr. Darrow questioned the better-off, more educated jury candidates about the “natural state” of men and women, and whether or not human society could’ve deteriorated to the point where the most basic attachments between members of the species-“the natural law of human society,” as Mr. Darrow put it-might be broken without any cause. Mr. Darrow didn’t say outright that the bond between a mother and her children was part of said “natural law”; he didn’t have to. It was clear that most of the people in the courtroom silently believed such to be the case. But in the same way that Mr. Darrow had dismissed any potential juror who spoke openly about female violence, so did Mr. Picton give the axe to any man who voiced a belief in such “natural” or “fundamental” attachments. Mr. Darrow eventually protested that Mr. Picton seemed to be throwing out the “entire concept of natural law,” a notion what he declared was the foundation of the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Picton answered that it wasn’t the business of the court to get into such philosophical discussions-they were concerned with criminal, not natural, law. It was an attitude that, while it didn’t earn him any affection from Judge Brown, was perfectly proper and within his rights, and many candidates what Mr. Darrow clearly preferred were duly sent packing.

By noon each man had used up the better portion of his peremptory challenges, and had rejected a few jurors for specific cause, to boot, so that when the midday recess was called only half the jury had been selected. It looked like the afternoon session might get a little testier than the morning had been, for when one or the other of the lawyers ran out of peremptories it meant that he’d have to start coming up with full sets of reasons for rejecting a given candidate. By three o’clock the peremptories on both sides were gone, with five jurors still to be selected; and while Mr. Picton figured that most of the men already in the box were characters that he could probably persuade to see things his way, he also suspected that Judge Brown was a lot more likely to be sympathetic to Mr. Darrow’s stated reasons for rejecting candidates than he would be to the prosecution’s. This suspicion proved justified. Mr. Darrow just kept repeating the idea that “natural law” was the mainstay of all of American government and society: if any man accepted the idea that the “bonds of nature” could be “capriciously broken,” Mr. Darrow said, he was basically saying that the United States itself was a seriously flawed concept-and if he felt that way, said man had no business serving on an American jury.

It was, as the Doctor put it, “ludicrous but singularly effective logic,” expressed by Mr. Darrow as if it were a deeply held conviction but more likely created for the particular case and town he found himself working. (This idea seemed confirmed when we found out that Judge Brown had served as an officer in the Civil War-a fact what Mr. Darrow had most likely discovered.) Mr. Picton had no similarly simple philosophical justification for rejecting jury candidates; in fact, he had no reason at all that appealed to Judge Brown’s old-school patriotism. He could only keep protesting that people’s personal feelings about politics, philosophy, or even religion shouldn’t be allowed to influence their judgment in a criminal proceeding, where guilt or innocence were determined by evidence, not beliefs. Such thinking was a little bloodless for the likes of Judge Brown, and as the shadows grew longer on the courtroom floor it began to wear on him pretty clearly, while Mr. Darrow’s deliberate attempts to appeal to the old man’s deepest sentiments-voiced, as they were, in the “plain” Midwestern oratory what Mr. Darrow had obviously mastered-only seemed to grow more colorful and persuasive.

By the time all twelve seats in the jury box had been filled, there was no real way to determine which side had the upper hand in terms of the personal inclinations of the men in the chairs. But if I’d been forced to bet on it, I would’ve said that the balance was leaning in Mr. Darrow’s favor-and the fact that Mr. Moore brought word back from the Casino that night that the odds against a conviction had gone up to sixty to one seemed to bear this feeling out. For Mr. Picton, the battle would start out as an uphill one.

Still, we did have witnesses and evidence in our favor, and there wasn’t any real reason yet to believe that these wouldn’t change the opinions of even those jurors what were privately inclined to view the charges against Libby Hatch with some doubt; after all, Sheriff Dunning had started out skeptical about the prosecution’s case, but’d had his mind thoroughly changed by the grand jury proceedings. Knowing all this, Mr. Picton stayed in his office very late on Monday night, going over his opening statement (to be delivered the next morning) and also the schedule according to which he planned to reveal circumstantial evidence and call witnesses. Mrs. Hastings asked me to take some food up to the court house at about midnight, and I found Mr. Picton still going like a madman, smoking, reading, rehearsing, and once again having at the hair on his face and head like he was intent on doing himself some injury. The sight made me marvel all the more at how he was able to come across so cool and collected in the actual courtroom: I knew that there was no telling where a particular person might feel the most at ease with the world, but the difference in this case between the anxious, slightly peculiar man we knew outside the courtroom and the steady, brilliant lawyer we saw pursue the case against Libby Hatch was so extreme as to be confusing.

But confusing or not, Mr. Picton was always impressive in court, especially the following morning, when he opened the case against Libby Hatch. At ten o’clock Judge Brown gaveled the proceedings to order, and Iphegeneia Blaylock got her quick hands ready to record Mr. Picton’s statement. When the assistant district attorney rose to address the jury, there was no sign on his face of the devilish smile what had been in evidence throughout the arraignment and the jury selection: he was all seriousness, knowing, it seemed to me, that his change in mood would cause the jury to sit up and take special notice from the start. Wearing a dark suit what seemed to reinforce the idea that he’d come before them on business what he had no personal wish to pursue, Mr. Picton paced in front of the jury box for a minute or so before speaking; only when he saw the faces of the twelve men inside that box grow completely attentive and what you might call receptive did he open his mouth.

“Gentlemen,” he began, in a much slower and more melancholy way than was his habit, “you have heard the state’s charges against the defendant. But there are facts outside the indictment of which you should be aware.” Mr. Picton lifted a hand toward the defense table without looking over at Libby Hatch. “This woman has recently been deprived of her husband, a man of great bravery who earlier in life sacrificed his health to the noble causes of Union and emancipation. You must none of you think that the state is unaware of this fact, or that it would, as the counsel for the defense has intimated in the local press, disturb the mourning of such a woman simply for the sake of solving an old and troubling crime. I tell you honestly, we would not do it. Even had we the time to pursue such private, perverse agendas, the memory of a man who was one of his country’s many heroes at a critical hour would block our path, as surely as the felling of a mighty tree would block the passage of traffic on the Charlton road.”

I was leaning forward in my chair, not only to make sure I heard everything Mr. Picton said, but also to catch the Doctor’s reactions to it all. At the mention of poor old Micah Hunter, the Doctor started to nod, working hard to keep the expression on his face absolutely still. “Good,” he whispered. “Good-don’t let Darrow possess that subject.”