[Thatcher] turned from the jury, closed his eyes for a single second, and opened them on the heaven-sent vision of the court recorder dragging open the sash of a window. Through that breach Thatcher drew light and breath, and there was his answer, this would be the last of it. He was finished with declaring himself to a public without ears to hear his language. Without shelter, we stand in daylight, she’d insisted once, and he had thought only of death. Simple man. He might sleep in a bed of cactus thorns or a tree under the stars, but he could choose the company he kept and it would not be this fearful, self-interested mob shut up in airless rooms. They would huddle in their artifice of safety, their heaven would collapse. His would be the forthright march through the downfall.