CHAPTER V.—­continued.  THE “UGOLINI” MURDER.

Of late years, round and about Viterbo, there was a well-known character, Giovanni Ugolini by name, a sort of itinerant “Jack-of-all-trades,” who wandered about from place to place, picking up any odd job he could find, and begging when he could turn his hand to nothing else.  He is described in the legal reports as a Tinker and Umbrella-mender, but his especial line of industry, novel to us at any rate, seems to have been that of a scraper and cleaner of old tombstones.  By these various pursuits, he scraped together a good bit of money for a man in his position, and at the end of his winter circuit, in the year 1857, he had saved up by common report as much as 70 scudi, or about 14 pounds odd.  On the 4th of May in that year, Ugolini left the little town of Castel Giorgio, with the avowed intention of going to Viterbo, to change his monies into Tuscan coin.  Being belated on his road, he resolved to stop over the night at the house of a certain Andrea Volpi which lay on his road, and where he had often slept before.  On the following morning, about eight o’clock, he left Volpi’s house and went on his journey towards Viterbo.  Nothing more is positively known about him, except that on the same day his body was found on a bye-path, a little off the direct Viterbo road, covered with wounds.  No money was discovered about his person, while there was every indication of his clothes and pack having been rummaged 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.