"Yeah," she said, nodding, 'he probably would've at that. Well, I don't know Danny all that well, but what I know I've always liked. And now this pretty picture starts to unfold before us. I wont say I can hardly wait."

"I can't say I'm looking forward to it much myself," Robey said. "My mother's father opened the Armstrong Tile store over in West Springfield after World War Two. Bigelow Carpet line was later. My father ran the business after Grumpy died, 'til it was his turn to retire. Your family's been living in an area, really not that large a one, doing business fifty years, going into people's homes, time and time again; whenever something like this happens you're bound to know some of the people affected by it. Not that they're friends of yours, exactly; they're just people you've been on good terms with, part of the landscape, the same social fabric. Hate to see them fall and get disgraced, get their lives destroyed like that, torn apart in public.

In a way it's happening to you."

"Although not saying that I think, for one instant, mind you," the judge said, 'that Dan Hilliard never did anything wrong. Something most other people probably also would've done, but still very much against the law? Sure, of course he did. He had balls. He would've done lots of slightly illegal things; shady, questionable things.

Probably hundreds of them, over the course of the years."

She paused and then chuckled. "Like everybody else in his line of work back then, when he was still in it. It was the custom and usage of the trade, the good old political trade. No one ever got too badly hurt."

She reflected. "Come right down to it," she said, "I guess what I'm really saying is that I don't want to see the guy caught. Must be about sixty by now; a small living legend around here by now so I would think, anyway.