r on a charge of wilful murder,
accompanied with treachery and robbery, while Starna is only brought to
trial as an accomplice to the crime, not as a principal. Before the
actual guilt of either prisoner is ascertained, the public prosecutor,
that is, the Government, decides the relative degree of their respective
hypothetical guilt. The justice of this proceeding may be questioned,
but its motive is palpable enough. There was little or no direct
evidence against the prisoners, and to convict either of them, it was
necessary to rely upon the testimony of the other.

"With both the prisoners," so runs the sentence of the court, "a criminal
motive could be established in the fact of their avowed poverty, as they
each clearly admitted, that neither they nor their families possessed
anything in the world, and that they derived the means of their miserable
sustenance from their daily labour alone." A very close intimacy was
proved to have existed between the prisoners, so much so, indeed, that
Starna had frequently been reproved by his parents for his friendship
with a man who stood in such ill repute as Volpi. The fact that the
murdered man was, or was believed to be in possession of money, was shown
to be well known amongst the Volpi family. Two of Serafino Volpi's
brothers were reported to have spoken to third parties of Ugolini's
savings, and one of them expressed a wish to rob him. Why this brother
was neither arrested nor apparently examined, is one of the many
mysteries, by the way, you come across in perusing these Papal reports.
Serafino too had mentioned himself, to a neighbour, his suspicion of the
tinker's having saved money. On the morning of the murder, Starna was
known to have come to the Volpi's cottage, to have talked with Serafino,
and to have left again in his company, shortly after Ugolini's departure.
After about an hour's absence, Serafino Volpi returned home, and
therefore had time enough to commit the murder. He was shown, moreover,
to have been in possession of a knife, about which he could give no
satisfactory account, and which might have inflicted the wounds found on
the corpse.

These appear to have been all the facts which could be established
against either Volpi or Starna by positive evidence, and, at the worst,
such facts could only be said to constitute a case for suspicion.
Previously, however, to the trial, Starna turned, what we should call,
"King's evidence," and, in contradict