"You're to put these on," he told the prisoners.

Inside the package they found new clothes, shirts, trousers, two pair of stockings.

"Who brought us these?" Daley asked.

The sergeant said, "I don't know. Just mind what you're about."

When they were dressed, the sergeant put the manacles on their hands and feet, and they were marched back down the alley, this time toward the front of the jailhouse. They halted just short of the street. From the alley, they could see more soldiers waiting out there, a company or better. With them were Sheriff Mattoon and the captain, both seated upon horses. The two men were engaged in conversation. They were looking up the street at something Halligan could not see from where he stood in the alleyway.

The sheriff finally turned in his saddle to face his troops. His features were tense, almost grim. "Hold your formation," he commanded. "And remember, no one is to discharge a weapon without my orders. Is that clear?"

At this, the guards exchanged anxious looks.

Then the order was given, and they moved out into the street to join the others, where the guards formed lines on either side of the prisoners. Halligan could then see what had worried the sheriff. A huge crowd lined Pleasant Street its entire length, all the way to where it met Main. In some places people stood three and four deep, craning their necks and pushing and jostling to get a better view.

The captain pulled out his saber and cried, "Forward," and they started toward the center of town. People had taken up positions on porches and on the beds of wagons, and some leaned out of upper story windows. A number of boys had climbed into the lower branches of the elm trees edging the road. One had even shimmied up a flagpole near the intersection with Main Street. As they approached the center, the boy on the flagpole could be heard crying, "They're coming!" and a great murmur went forth from the crowd. Some spectators called out things, taunts and epithets and curses, and a few even held crudely painted signs. Halligan noticed one that said, irish go home, while another proclaimed, papists burn in hell. Others waved their fists or made obscene gestures. A pretty girl in a second-story window stuck out her tongue at them as they passed.

The noise increased in volume and the crowd began to stir uneasily. When they reached Main Street, a torrent of rotten fruit and clods of earth rained down upon guards and prisoners alike. Their only protection was to shield themselves with their manacled hands. Some in the crowd actually brandished rakes and hoes, and a number held freshly hewn cudgels. As the procession moved up Main, the crowd began to press in upon the group from either side. A cry, at first low and inchoate, rose up from those assembled, gathered strength and clarity, and soon turned into a chant that swelled up and down the street: Hang them! Hang them! Then a man wearing a buckskin jacket and a blue voyageur's cap rushed from the crowd, wielding a club before him. "Give us those Irish murderers," he cried. Several guards had to fend him off using the butts of their muskets, knocking him to the ground. Others came to the man's defense, closing in on the group of soldiers. Just when it looked as if things might get out of hand, a gunshot exploded nearby. Startled, people froze in their tracks, and silence fell like a sodden blanket over the town. The sheriff had fired his pistol into the air. The bitter smell of gunpowder hung in a bluish cloud above the street.

"Good people of Northampton," the sheriff called from his horse. "Stand aside and let justice be done."

"Hand over those Irish murderers," a man called from the crowd.

"Yea, yea," several others cried.

"I give you fair warning," the sheriff said. And when they didn't immediately move back, he commanded his troops to fix bayonets, which they did.

"Men," said the sheriff. "Shoot the next person who gets in the way."

Realizing his threat was real, the crowd began slowly to fall back, though not without a certain aggrieved truculence. Before the crowd could recover, the procession was in motion again, marching rapidly in the direction of the courthouse. This day they passed by the courthouse and continued up the hill toward the Protestant meetinghouse that sat perched on a rise overlooking the small town like a sentry. As it turned out, it had been decided to conduct the trial there because it was larger and would hold more people. The meetinghouse was once the church of the famous minister Jonathan Edwards, whose fiery sermons in the previous century had put the fear of God into the town's citizens. Now it seemed somehow fitting that the two Catholics were to be tried there. The bell in the belfry sounded their coming, several deep, harsh peals that echoed throughout the valley.

They were led up the steps and into the large meetinghouse. The inside was plain, fierce in its austerity, unlike a Catholic church. The walls were unadorned, whitewashed, with no stained glass in the windows, no crucifixes or confessionals either. Halligan realized it was the first time he'd ever set foot in such a place. The building was already filled to overflowing, each pew crowded with spectators who had gotten there early to get a seat. When the crowd spotted the two, a low rumble floated upward, toward those seated in the balcony. The crowd was daunting, especially to men who had spent the past five months in a tiny dark cell by themselves. Faces pressed in upon them from all sides as the sheriff and the captain pushed through, escorting them to where their lawyer, Mr. Blake, sat at a table near the front.

"Good morning, gentlemen," their attorney said, standing. He wore a dark barrister's robe and a white wig atop his broad skull, which made him look slightly comical. As soon as the manacles were removed, he vigorously shook their hands. He had them sit down, Halligan next to him and Daley on the other side. "How are we today?" he inquired.

"Niver seen so many people for a trial," Daley said.

"Indeed. Quite a crowd," Blake said, turning eagerly to scan the audience. "I must admit I have never seen anything like it myself." Halligan noted that he seemed actually excited by the crowd. Then the lawyer began to sneeze, and he withdrew a handkerchief and blew his nose hard.

"Did you take the butter, sir?" Daley asked.

"Butter? Oh, no. I shall be fine though. Never felt better, in fact. I've heard that the governor himself is expected," he said, looking around again. "Can you imagine that? That's how important this trial has become in the commonwealth."

The man looked different today. Despite his cold, he appeared well rested, his spirits much improved. As he arranged his notes and wrote things down in his tablet, his movements were filled with a lightness and energy belying his cumbersome bulk. Though Halligan caught a whiff of rum on the man's breath, his eyes were sharp and clear, animated by some internal heat. He looked confident and at ease, in his natural element. Halligan could hardly believe the transformation. And then he realized what it was: the man liked this. He actually liked it. He looked forward to performing the way an actor would, and was excited by the large audience that would be watching him.

"Are you ready?" he asked, hardly able to suppress his enthusiasm.

"Ready as we'll ever be," Daley replied in a faltering voice.

Seated at another table up front were two men wearing an outfit similar to that worn by Blake. They recognized one as Mr. Hooker, the man who'd questioned them in jail and who'd been at their arraignment, but the other was unfamiliar. They'd not seen him at the inquest nor at the arraignment. He was an older man, distinguished looking, with sharp features, a thin mouth, a hooked nose.

"That is our Mr. Sullivan," Blake whispered, his tone both disparaging and reverential at once. "He has quite the reputation in capital cases."

"Excuse me, Mr. Blake," Halligan asked, "but how many murder cases have you tried?"

He looked over at them, drawing his lower lip down into a point. "Prior to this? Well. . . none actually."

"None?" Halligan said.

"Most of my previous legal experience has been wills and estates. Land disputes. That sort of thing. But the law is the law," he explained. Jaysus, thought Halligan, feeling his heart sink. "Now, no matter what happens," Blake counseled, "you are not to lose your composure. You mustn't show any signs of emotion regardless of what is said. The jury will be watching you very closely. Do you understand?"

They both nodded.

"Good. I see you received the new clothes. Your family brought them for you," he said to Daley.

"Me family? They're here?" Daley asked excitedly.

"They should be. They arrived on yesterday's stage."

Daley turned and began to scan the crowded room, looking for his folks. But there were so many faces. Outside, more people crowded about the church's long narrow windows to peer in. After a while, Daley cried, "There they are! There's Finola!" and he waved ecstatically. "And me mam, too. Over there, Jamy boy," he said to Halligan, pointing. In the back of the meetinghouse, on the same side as the defense, sat an old woman with a black kiddhoge over her head and a young woman holding a baby wrapped in a blanket. Both women offered up a little wave of acknowledgment. The wife, a skinny woman with large moist eyes, held up the baby and turned him so that Daley could see his son's face.

"She brung Michael!" he said. "That's me boy, Mr. Blake. Would you look at the size on him."

"Yes, I had the pleasure of meeting with them briefly this morning."

"How are they, sir?"

"They are all fine. They send their love. Oh, your wife wanted you to have this." From his waistcoast pocket he took out a piece of paper that had been folded into a square and gave it to Daley. Daley opened it to find a well-worn rosary, with shiny black beads and a small silver crucifix. On the paper was written a note, which he showed to Halligan. "God be with you, my love," Halligan read.

"But for heaven's sakes, don't let anyone see that now," Blake warned.

Daley slipped the rosary into his pocket.

"Will I get to visit with 'em?"

"After the trial," Blake explained.

"I couldn't just say a quick hello to them now?"

"No. Afterwards. It's all been arranged."

Halligan watched his friend smile at his wife and mouth the words, I love you. He scanned the courtroom, he couldn't say for what. In the faces of those staring back at him, he saw expressions of revulsion, of contempt, and not a few of curiosity. Immediately behind the prosecution table he saw several well-dressed men, dignitaries from town, he guessed. Among them he recognized Reverend Williams, a tall gaunt man with a pink face like undercooked pork. The minister had come to see them in jail once or twice. He had tried to get them to mend their evil papist ways and see God's true light while there was still time. In his long bony hand he held a Bible. Seated next to him was an older couple. The woman was dressed all in black. She wore a black bonnet, a long black skirt made of coarse homespun, and a black cloak over her shoulders. She was a farmer's wife, Halligan could tell, a plain woman dressed in her Sunday clothes for the occasion. Her hands were cracked and raw from hard work, her face windburned and wrinkled. The man he took to be her husband was also dressed in black. Several times Halligan noticed the assistant prosecutor turn to the couple and whisper something to them. They would nod soberly. Once the woman happened to glance in his direction and made eye contact with him. She seemed almost to flinch from the exchange.

Halligan leaned toward their attorney. "Those two behind the prosecutor, Mr. Blake," he said, indicating the pair. "Do you know who they are?"

Blake turned in his seat to look. "I believe they are Mr. and Mrs. Lyon."

"Who?" Halligan asked.

"The parents of the victim."

Halligan watched them for another moment or two. He wanted to go over and tell them he had nothing to do with it. That they were innocent. That he hadn't harmed a hair on their son's head. But then he recalled what Daley had said about the money. That it had been their son's money and now rightfully belonged to them. Hell with it, he thought. He knew the truth. That was good enough for him.

Right then, the clerk called for everyone to rise, as the two judges entered through a side door. They took their seats at a table that had been placed up on a raised platform where the minister normally would have given his sermon.

Judge Sedgwick gazed at Mr. Sullivan with a look of cool disdain.

"Is the state ready to proceed, Mr. Attorney General?" he asked curtly.

Sullivan rose slowly, offered a slight nod of his wizened head, then replied, "The commonwealth is ready, your honor."

"The court is grateful that you can take time from your other affairs to join us."

"I take the duties of my office with great earnestness, your honor."

"Of course," Sedgwick replied. Then he turned to Blake. "Your motion for a postponement, sir, has been closely reviewed and herewith denied."

"But your honor," Blake pleaded, "the defense has not had adequate time to prepare our case. We've had no opportunity to interview witnesses."

"We have not traveled all this distance, nor have all the people here today, to see the trial be delayed," the judge said flatly. "No, we will proceed as scheduled."

e prosecution and the defense spent the next hour or so picking a jury. As both sides asked questions of each potential juror, Daley kept turning around to look for his family. When he caught his wife's eye, she would smile demurely, and the color would come to her pale cheeks. Halligan watched her, too. She was a plain-looking woman with reddish-blond hair, too skinny for his taste. Still, he couldn't help thinking of all those letters he had read of hers. My dearest, how much I miss your loving arms. He seemed to know her in some intimate way he couldn't describe.

At last the jury was seated. They were common men, broad-shouldered farmers and hard-working craftsmen, merchants and shop-owners, even a blacksmith. Sober men with Yankee names like Elijah Hubbard and Jabez Nichols and Asa Spalding. Dressed in their finest homespun clothes, they were used to coming here each week to listen to their minister, Solomon Williams, speak of the terrible justice of God. But today they were as gods themselves, delivering their own justice, deciding the fate of two men. Uncertain in this new role, they perched awkwardly on a single row of hard benches that had no backrests, so that they had to sit upright throughout the long proceedings. They sat with their battered hands in their laps and their heads bowed slightly, the way they would in church. From time to time they would steal furtive glances at the two Irishmen, as if trying to read something in their countenances. One particular juror was Wallace, the town blacksmith, the man Halligan had seen in the street the other day as they passed by to the courthouse. He was a thick-necked, dark-complected man who kept glowering at them. He would look from Daley to Halligan and back again, a scowl on his soot-blackened features. The whites of his eyes gleamed.

The prosecution and the defense spent some time haggling over various technical issues with the judges, subjects Halligan could only vaguely follow. Occasionally Sullivan would smile and concede something to Blake, and sometimes it would be the other way around. Judge Sedgwick did most of the talking. The other one, Sewall, didn't say much. He belched occasionally and snorted now and then, but mostly he seemed content to sit quietly there.

Once this business was concluded, Judge Sedgwick told the prisoners to stand and raise their right hand while the clerk read the indictment again. After that, the judge said to the jury, "Good men and true, you shall now stand together and hearken to the evidence."

Mr. Sullivan opened the government's case. He rose and walked slowly toward the jury, his hands behind his back. Halligan noticed he had a decided limp. He stopped in front of the jury and gave something of a bow.

"May it please your honors, gentlemen of the jury," he began, his words measured and passionless, as if he were lecturing about philosophy. "It is unnecessary for me to make many observations to you in opening this cause, either on the importance of it to the prisoners, or to the government. A young man in the prime of life has been 'untimely ripped' from this worldly womb of ours. He will never know the joy of witnessing another sunrise, marking another spring, smelling another flower. He will not know a marriage bed. He will not savor the happiness of the birth of a son. He will not know what it is to have grandchildren. He will never again look upon the loving faces of his mother and father, who sit before us today." At this, he held his hand out toward the parents of the victim, his face assuming an attitude of bereavement. The mother whimpered audibly, bringing a handkerchief to her mouth. "No, gentlemen, these gifts of God are forever denied him. He has been cast down into the darkness of the grave. And for what? For what, gentlemen? But for this," he said, removing from his pocket a few bank bills. He held them up and waved them for the benefit of the jury. Each member stared at the money. "A few trifling dollars. That's all this poor young man's life was worth to these . . . these men," he said disdainfully, pointing at the two Irishmen. Though his features remained poised, cool as stone, his voice slowly began to warm to his subject. "They murdered for gain. They murdered simply because they wished to have the fruits of another man's labor. These men, these lazy Irishmen, came to these shores because they wanted the freedom and opportunity to make of themselves what they would. What their own hard work and God-given talents would provide. Instead of accomplishing it by the sweat of their brow, by industry and diligence, they took the primrose path and sought to gain by robbing another.

"Your situation, gentlemen, is one of the most solemn to which men are ever called. The destinies of two of your fellowmen are dependent on your verdict, and though you are selected and sworn to pass between the accused and the commonwealth on a question of life or death, yet you have this consolation--that you are sworn to try the issue according to the evidence. If you follow the dictates of your own understanding as influenced by the evidence alone, you will discharge your duty to yourselves and to your country, however afflictive the event may be to others."

He looked at each one of the jurors in turn, as if speaking personally to each. Though his voice had increased slightly in volume, his features remained placid, emotionless, a pale mask.

"There are three counts in the indictment." He then went over once more what the clerk had just read. When he was finished restating the indictment to the jury, he said, "Hence, gentlemen, if you shall find to your full satisfaction that the deceased came to his death in either of the ways I have specified, you will be authorized to find a verdict of conviction."

Next, the attorney general spent the better part of an hour going over the facts of the case in painstaking detail. With cool equanimity, he explained how at about one o'clock in the afternoon, on November ninth of the previous year, Mr. Lyon had been riding from Cazenovia, New York, returning to Connecticut, when he was waylaid by highwaymen. How he had been shot in the side by a large-bore pistol, but that the bullet struck a rib and had not proved fatal. How his demise had actually resulted from several vicious and premeditated blows to the back of the head, as well as by his having been immersed in the cold waters of the Chicopee River. How several witnesses the prosecution would produce could verify having seen him traveling east on a large bay horse with new saddlebags. How the defendants, too, were recognized by several witnesses traveling in the opposite direction along the same road, and how one man would testify that he had seen the two walking a mere seventy rods from the place where the man was killed, on the very day and almost at the precise instant of the deed. How the murder weapons, a pair of navy pistols, had been found near the murder site and matched exactly holsters sewn on the inside of the prisoners' greatcoats, and how the prosecution would call a witness who had sold similar weapons to a man with an "Irish accent." How bank bills were found in the possession of the prisoners when they were apprehended, bills which were drawn on the same banks and for the same amounts as those that Marcus Lyon had had on his person when he left New York. How it had taken the prisoners nearly five full days to travel only eighty miles from Boston to Wilbraham--the site of the murder--but only two days to travel more than one hundred and thirty miles to New York after they had committed their crime.

"We shall prove all of this to your full satisfaction. But most importantly, gentlemen . . ." the attorney general said, pausing, as he limped slowly over to where the two Irishmen sat. He came to a stop before their table, his arms wrapped across his narrow chest, a forefinger placed squarely against his lips. He stood there for several seconds, his gaze sifting the courtroom, weighing it appraisingly, before settling finally on the two men. He permitted the silence to continue, so that it seemed to expand and fill the courtroom, until all ears were craning and you could hear the tck ... tck ... tck of water falling somewhere. He gazed down at each of the prisoners in turn with a cool, penetrating stare. Up close, Halligan saw that the attorney general had small dark-brown eyes, the fierce, imperturbable ones of some great sea bird. A cormorant perhaps, like those he used to see diving for fish off Slea Head in Dingle. The man continued staring at them, as if, in fact, he actually intended to dive into their very souls, seize hold of their guilt as if it were some fish, and return to the surface with that guilt for all to see, to wave it about as he had with the bank bills.

"We shall call to the stand an eyewitness," he said, finally breaking the silence, "someone who saw with his own eyes these very men leading Mr. Lyon's horse into the pasture not far from where the murder was committed. This brave young man, who stood no farther from the accused than I do now, saw them in full possession of the victim's horse. The same witness who was later able to pick them out from a line-up and swear with complete confidence that they were, indeed, the men he saw with Mr. Lyon's mount. These, gentlemen, are the facts we intend to present to you today. If they produce in your minds a full conviction of the prisoners' guilt, as I am certain they shall, you will pronounce them guilty; if not, you will be happy in returning a verdict of acquittal. Thank you, gentlemen. May God grant you wisdom to know the truth and the courage to perform your duties."

He then went over to where Mr. Hooker waited and took a seat.

"Do you wish to make a statement, Mr. Blake?" Judge Sedgwick asked.

"Not at this time, your honor," he replied.

"Very well," said the judge. "The prosecution may call its first witness."

Mr. Hooker, the assistant prosecutor, now took over for the state. It soon became obvious that the attorney general left for his assistant the menial tasks of the trial, while reserving for himself those which offered more in the way of dramatic flair. Still, the assistant nervously sprang from his seat, eager as a spaniel on the scent of a rabbit. The first witness he called was Samuel Merrick, the physician who performed the autopsy at the coroner's inquest. Dr. Merrick came forward and placed his hand on a large black Bible the clerk held for him. After being sworn in, he took his seat, a simple chair that was positioned to the left of where the judges sat, near the jury. He was a well-dressed older man with a high stiff collar, a full pudding cravat, and the small clothes of the previous century. His eyes were gray and sunken, and his mouth kept working on his badly fitted ivory dentures. When he spoke, the loose teeth made a distinct clicking sound.

"Dr. Merrick," Mr. Hooker began, "would you tell us how you came to examine the body of Marcus Lyon and what your findings were?"

"On Monday morning, the eleventh of November," he began, his mouth going click click click. "I was called upon by the jury of inquest and went to Mr. Calkins's where the body was. Over the right eye of the deceased was a hole to the skull. On the left part of the head was another wound of similar nature, but the bone was not injured. On the back part of the head rather to the right side, the skull was broken. I applied a common probe and it went in the whole length of it without any obstruction."

"Did it enter the brain, sir?"

"Without doubt," he replied.

"Were these wounds caused by a bullet, sir?"

"They were not." Click click. "On Mr. Lyon's right side, against the third rib from the bottom when we took off his clothes, I observed a bullet hole. The inquest wished to have the body opened to see if it entered."

At this, Halligan heard a high, thin gasp, as from someone who had accidentally cut herself while peeling potatoes. He turned and saw the woman in black. She had her hand to her mouth and was quietly sobbing. Her husband tried to comfort her.

"Continue, sir," instructed Mr. Hooker.

"We opened the body, but the bullet did not penetrate beyond the rib."

Judge Sewall, who had been sitting quietly, his chin supported by the palm of one hand, sat up suddenly. "Would the wounds to the back of the head have been mortal, doctor?" he asked.

"Immediately, your honor."

"In your learned estimation, did such wounds require a substantial force?"

"Yes, sir. It would be my judgment that great force would be needed."

Judge Sewall, having gotten the response he was looking for, went back to resting his head on his hand.

"No further questions, your honor," offered Mr. Hooker, who walked over and sat down next to the attorney general.

"Your witness," Judge Sedgwick said to Blake.

Without getting up, Blake said, "Dr. Merrick, I would first like to thank you for taking the time from your busy schedule to come here today. Now, you mentioned that the bullet wound to Mr. Lyon's side was not fatal."

"That's correct," he replied, his teeth clattering away.

"Did you find the ball, sir?"

"We did. When we took off Mr. Lyon's clothes the ball fell to the floor. One of the members of the inquest jury picked it up."

"Did the bullet suit either of the pistols that were found at the scene?"

"It did not--it was too small."