“Thanks, Mr. Stoltzfus.”

“Ellie,” he whispered loudly, “you can call me Samuel.”

I grinned. “Okay. Samuel. Are you a little bit nervous?”

“Yes.” The word came out on a guffaw of relief.

“I’ll bet. Have you ever been in court before?”

“No.”

“Did you ever think you would be in court, one day?”

He shook his head. “Ach, no. We don’t believe in the filing of lawsuits, so I never gave it a minute’s thought.”

“By ‘we’ you mean whom?”

“The People,” he said.

“The Amish?”

“Yes.”

“Were you asked to be a witness today?”

“No. I volunteered.”

“You willingly put yourself into an uncomfortable situation? Why?”

His clear, blue gaze locked on Katie. “Because she didn’t murder her baby.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve known her my whole life. Since we were kids. I’ve seen her every single day for years. Now I work for Katie’s father on the farm.”

“Really? What do you do there?”

“Anything Aaron tells me to do, pretty much. Mostly, I’m there to help with the planting and the harvesting. Oh, ja, and the milking. It’s a dairy.”

“When is the milking done, Samuel?”

“Four-thirty A.M. and four-thirty P.M.”

“What does it entail?”

George raised a brow. “Objection. Do we really need a lesson in farm management?”

“I’m laying foundation, Your Honor,” I argued.

“Overruled. Mr. Stoltzfus, you may answer the question.”

Samuel nodded. “Well, we start by mixing the feed. Then we shovel up behind the stanchions, and that goes into the manure pit. Aaron’s got twenty cows, so this takes a while. Then we wipe down their teats and put on the milking pump, which runs on generator. Two cows get hooked up at a time, did I say that? The milk goes into a can that gets dumped into the bulk tank. And usually in the middle we have to stop and shovel up behind ’em again.”

“When does the milk company truck come to pick up the milk?”

“Every other day, save the Lord’s Day. When it falls on a Sunday, it comes crazy times, like Saturdays at midnight.”

“Is the milk pasteurized before the truck takes it?”

“No, that happens after it leaves the farm.”

“Do the Fishers get their milk from the supermarket?”

Samuel grinned. “That would be sort of silly, wouldn’t it? Like buying bacon when you’ve just slaughtered a perfectly good pig. The Fishers drink their own fresh milk. I have to bring a pitcher in to Katie’s mother twice a day.”

“So the milk the Fishers drink has not yet been pasteurized?”

“No, but it tastes just the same as the stuff you get in the white plastic jug. You’ve had it. Don’t you think so?”

“Objection-could someone remind the witness that he’s not supposed to be asking questions?” George said.

The judge leaned sideways. “Mr. Stoltzfus, I’m afraid the prosecutor’s right.”

The big man reddened and looked into his lap. “Samuel,” I said quickly, “why do you feel that you know Katie so well?”

“I’ve seen her in so many situations I know how she acts-when she’s sad, when she’s happy. I was there when her sister drowned, when her brother got banned for good from the church. Two years ago, too, we started to go together.”

“You mean date?”

“Ja.”

“Were you dating when Katie had the baby?”

“Yes.”

“Were you there when she gave birth?”

“No, I wasn’t,” Samuel said. “I found out later.”

“Did you think at the time that it was your baby?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He cleared his throat. “We never slept together.”

“Did you know who the father of that baby was?”

“No. Katie wouldn’t tell me.”

I softened my voice. “How did that make you feel?”

“Pretty bad. She was my girl, you see. I didn’t understand what had happened.”

For a moment, I simply let the jury look at Samuel. A strong, good-looking man dressed in clothes that seemed strange, speaking haltingly in his second language, trying to keep afloat in a situation that was completely unfamiliar to him. “Samuel,” I said. “Your girlfriend gets pregnant with someone else’s baby-the baby’s mysteriously found dead, although you’re not there to see how it happens-you’re nervous about being in a courtroom to testify-yet you’ve come here to tell us she didn’t commit murder?”

“That’s right.”

“Why are you sticking up for Katie, who, by all means, has wronged you?”

“Everything you said, Ellie, it’s true. I should be very angry. I was, for a time, but now I’m not. Now I’ve gotten past my own selfishness to where I’ve got to help her. See, when you’re Plain, you don’t put yourself forward. You just don’t do it, because that would be Hochmut-puffing yourself up-and the truth is there’s always others more important than you. So Katie, when she hears others telling lies about her and this baby, she won’t want to fight back, or stand up for herself. I am here to stand up for her.” As if listening to his own his words, he slowly got to his feet and stared at the jury. “She did not do this. She could not do this.”

Every one of the twelve was arrested by the image of Samuel’s face, set with quiet, fierce conviction. “Samuel, do you still love her?”

He turned, his eyes sliding past me to light on Katie. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

George tapped his forefinger against his lips. “She was your girlfriend, but she was sleeping with some other guy?”

Samuel’s eyes narrowed. “Did you not just hear what I said?”

The prosecutor held up his hands. “Just wondering about your feelings on that subject, that’s all.”

“I didn’t come here to talk about my feelings. I came here to talk about Katie. She’s done nothing wrong.”

I covered my chuckle with a cough. For someone inexperienced, Samuel could be a hell of a mountain to move. “Does your religion practice forgiveness, Mr. Stoltzfus?” George asked.

“Samuel.”

“All right, then. Samuel. Does your religion practice forgiveness?”

“Yes. If a person humbles himself and confesses to his sin, he’ll always be welcome back in the church.”

“After he admits to what he did.”

“After confessing, that’s true.”

“Okay. Now let’s forget about the church for a minute. Don’t answer as an Amishman, just answer as a person. Aren’t there some things you just can’t excuse?”

Samuel’s lips tightened. “I cannot answer without thinking Plain, because it’s who I am. And if I couldn’t forgive someone, it wouldn’t be their problem, but mine, because I wasn’t being a true Christian.”

“In this particular case, you personally forgave Katie.”

“Yes.”

“But you just said that forgiveness implies the other party has already confessed to a sin.”

“Well . . . ja.”

“So if you forgave Katie, she must have done something wrong-in spite of the fact that you told us not five minutes ago she didn’t.”

Samuel was silent for a moment. I held my breath, waiting for George to strike the killing blow. Then the Amishman looked up. “I am not a smart man, Mr. Callahan. I didn’t go to college, like you. I don’t really know what you’re trying to ask me. Yes, I forgave Katie-but not for killing a baby. The only thing I had to forgive Katie for was breaking my heart.” He hesitated. “And I don’t think even you English can put her in jail for that.”

Owen Zeigler was apparently allergic to the courtroom. For the sixth time in as many minutes, he sneezed, covering his nose with a florid paisley handkerchief. “Sorry. Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Judge Ledbetter.

“Dust mites. Nasty little creatures. They live in pillows, mattresses-and, I’ll bet, under the rugs here.” He sniffed a bit. “They feed on the scales shed by human skin, and their waste products cause allergic symptoms. You know, if you monitored the humidity a little better in here, you might reduce the irritants.”

“I assume you’re referring to the mites, and not the lawyers,” the judge said dryly.