and rifled.

Assuming, as one must, the correctness of these facts, there can be no
doubt that a very brutal murder and robbery had been committed. For some
reasons, what, we are not told, the suspicions of the police fell at once
on one of Volpi's sons, called Serafino, a lad of about 22, and on a
friend of his, Bonaventura Starna, about two years older than himself.
Both of these persons, who were common labourers, were, in consequence,
arrested on the 7th of May. They were not tried, however, till the 27th
of April, in the year following, when they were arraigned for the murder
before the lay criminal and civil court of Viterbo.

The two prisoners, nevertheless, are not tried on the same charge. Volpi
is arraigned by the public prosecutor 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