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'Well, why don't you just begin at the beginning?' the warden said, probably in his 

sweetest let's-all-turn-to-the-23rd-psalm-and-read-in-unison voice. 'That usually works 

the best.' 

And so Andy did. He began by refreshing Norton of the details of the crime he had been 

imprisoned for. Then he told the warden exactly what Tommy Williams had told him. He 

also gave out Tommy's name, which you may think wasn't so wise in light of later 

developments, but I'd just ask you what else he could have done, if his story was to have 

any credibility at all. 

When he had finished, Norton was completely silent for some time. I can just see him, 

probably tipped back in his office chair under the picture of Governor Reed hanging on 

the wall, his fingers steepled, his liver lips pursed, his brow wrinkled into ladder rungs 

halfway to the crown of his head, his thirty-year pin gleaming mellowly. 

'Yes,' he said finally. That's the damnedest story I ever heard. But I'll tell you what 

surprises me most about it, Dufresne.' 

'What's that, sir?' 

'That you were taken in by it.' 

'Sir? I don't understand what you mean.' And Chester said that Andy Dufresne, who had 

faced down Byron Hadley on the plate-shop roof thirteen years before, was almost 

floundering for words. 

'Well now,' Norton said. 'It's pretty obvious to me that this young fellow Williams is 

impressed with you. Quite taken with you, as a matter of fact He hears your tale of woe, 

and it's quite natural of him to want to ... cheer you up, let's say. Quite natural. He's a 

young man, not terribly bright Not surprising he didn't realize what a state it would put 

you into. Now what I suggest is -' 

'Don't you think I thought of that?' Andy asked. 'But I'd never told Tommy about the man 

working down at the marina. I never told anyone that - it never even crossed my mind! 

But Tommy's description of his cellmate and that man ... they're identical!' 

'Well now, you may be indulging in a little selective perception there,' Norton said with a 

chuckle. Phrases like that, selective perception, are required learning for people in the 

penalogy and corrections business, and they use them all they can. 

"That's not it at all. Sir.' 

"That's your slant on it,' Norton said, 'but mine differs. And let's remember that I have 

only your word that there was such a man working at the Falmouth Country Club back 

then.' 

'No, sir,' Andy broke in again. 'No, that isn't true. Because-' 

'Anyway,' Norton overrode him, expansive and loud, 'let's just look at it from the other 

end of the telescope, shall we? Suppose -just suppose, now - that there really was a fellow 

named Elwood Blotch.' 

'Blatch,' Andy said tightly. 

'Blatch, by all means. And let's say he was Thomas Williams's cellmate in Rhode Island. 

The chances are excellent that he has been released by now. Excellent. Why, we don't 

even know how much time he might have done there before he ended up with Williams, 

do we? Only that he was doing a six-to-twelve.'