"Stop it!"

"Listen to me. You need to think of them. You need to live for them!"

Daley turned to stare at his wife seated in the back of the room. She was rocking the child in her arms. Daley gazed at them for several long seconds. His big Adam's apple bobbed twice as he swallowed hard. Halligan saw he was considering it. The offer was like a hand held out to a drowning man.

"Do you want to make your wife a widow?" Halligan asked. "Do you want your son to be fatherless? Is that what you want, Dom?"

"No, of course not. Christ Almighty."

"Then it's the only way. What do I have to lose? Nothing."

"You got your life to live same as me."

"I don't have anybody would care whether I lived or died. You do."

Daley was silent for a while, staring off into space. He was weighing things, thinking of that piece of land he was going to buy, seeing his son grow up. He glanced at his family again. Finally, he grabbed Halligan's wrist, squeezing it hard. "I wish to God I could let you do it. But I cannot."

"Dom--"

"No! I'll hear no more of this. We're in this together. We both live or we both hang." Daley touched Halligan's shoulder. "But thank ye anyway, Jamy boy."

After the break, the prosecution called their star witness, the young boy Laertes Fuller. He was obviously nervous before the large crowd. A thin boy of thirteen, Fuller had large ears, a sallow complexion, and the timorous eyes of a dog who knew well its master's boot. Blake objected to the prosecution calling a boy of such tender years, citing precedence that held fourteen as the usual age at which the law recognized mental competence in a witness. Judge Sedgwick overruled him yet again, saying the court would allow the boy's testimony and leave it to the jurors to decide the weight they would give to it.

As soon as the boy was sworn in, the attorney general took over for the prosecution. He rose slowly and approached the witness. His limp seemed more pronounced now, and he walked stiffly, with a slight stoop. He paused dramatically beside the boy and turned to view the courthouse. It was so quiet you could hear a horsefly buzzing, banging relentlessly against the glass of one of the windows.

"Do you understand the seriousness of these proceedings, Master Fuller?" he asked the boy.

"I do, sir," he replied, glancing sheepishly at the attorney general.

"Where do you live, Laertes?" Sullivan asked.

"In Wilbraham. On the mountain there."

"How far is your home from the place where the murder was committed?"

"Not far. Less than a quarter mile, I reckon."

"Please tell the court what you saw on the ninth of November last."

The boy glanced at the two Irishmen, then quickly averted his gaze like a hand drawn away from a hot iron.

"About one o'clock I spied two men on the turnpike going west. They passed on and left my sight. In a few minutes I went upon the same road and saw them coming back."

"What were they doing?" the attorney general asked.

"One was leading, and the other driving a horse. They turned up the old road that goes up the mountain and I followed them. When they were at the top of the hill, one of them stopped, and the other jumped on the horse and rode him off. I got over a stone wall nearby and took to gathering apples under a tree."

"Why apples?"

The boy shrugged his thin shoulders. "I had not eaten lunch, and I was hungry, sir."

Sullivan smiled benevolently. "Then what did you see?"

"That man," he said haltingly, pointing at Daley, "come up to the wall and looked directly at me."

"What did you do then?"

"I ran home."

"You ran? Were you afraid?"

"Not then, sir. I had not a reason to be afraid then. I only learned of what happened the next day. I was just cold is all."

"I see. How far were they from you when you first saw them walking along the turnpike road?"

"Some hundred feet or so."

"How far were they from the place where Lyon was killed?"

"Not far. I would say it was but fifty feet. Perhaps sixty."

The attorney general removed a handkerchief from his cuff and delicately dabbed the sweat that had gathered on his thin upper lip.

"At the top of the hill, did you observe the horse?" he asked the boy.

"I did not pay much attention to him, sir."

"But you took note of what color he was, did you not?"

"Yes. A reddish color."

"Did you see him afterwards?"

"Yes, sir. I saw him wandering loose in the pasture of John Bliss."

The attorney general limped back to his table and lifted up a sheet of paper. He looked at it for a moment, then returned to the witness.

"Which of the prisoners was driving him?"

"That one, sir," the boy said, pointing again at Daley.

"Did you see the other's face?"

"I did not."

"After their arrest they were brought back to Springfield," Mr. Sullivan continued. "From amongst a large group of men, did you not freely and of your own accord select Daley as the man you saw driving the horse?"

"I did, sir."

"You have sworn on the Bible to tell the truth, Laertes. Have you the least doubt but that Dominic Daley, the man who sits before you today, was the selfsame man whom you saw driving Marcus Lyon's horse?"

"No, sir. None," he said, gaining courage enough to stare at the defendants. "It was him, all right."

"Thank you, Laertes. You are a very brave young man," said the Attorney General.

Daley whispered to Halligan, "Oc/i. Gimme five minutes with the little shite, and I'd make 'im spit out the truth."

Blake walked to the front, carrying a piece of paper on which he'd jotted down his scribblings. His head tilted downward, the boy watched the approach of the defense attorney's squat figure warily, eyeing him from beneath his brows.

"You must be tired, Laertes," the lawyer said. "After your long journey here."

The boy lifted his shoulders unevenly before letting them settle. "A little, sir." "Given the lateness of the hour, I shall endeavor to make my questions as brief as possible. To begin, why did you follow the defendants up the hill?"

"I was curious."

"Curious? Yet you had no reason to suspect anything then, correct?"

The boy shrugged, glanced at the attorney general. "I don't know."

"But as you told Mr. Sullivan, you didn't learn of the murder until the following day."

The boy pondered that for a moment, then replied, "Like I said, I was curious."

"Yes, you seem like a very curious boy to me," Blake said, glancing down at his notes. "Now you said, and I quote, 'I spied two men on the turnpike going west. They passed on and left my sight. In a few minutes, I went upon the same road and saw them coming back.' 'A few minutes' are your precise words, are they not, Laertes?"

"Yes, sir."

"Exactly how long is a few minutes?"

The boy shrugged again. "I don't know."

"Well, from the time you first saw them walking west along the turnpike to the time you saw them leading the horse, was it five minutes? Ten? Fifteen?"

The boy thought for a moment. "I would say it was not more than fifteen minutes."

"You are quite certain of that, Laertes? That is was no more than fifteen minutes."

"I am, sir."

"When you saw the two men the second time, did you happen to notice if their trousers were wet?"

"Wet, sir?"

"Yes, were their pantlegs wet or dry?"

"I can't say one way or the other."

"Did you notice anything about their clothing, Laertes? Were their clothes muddy? Did they have blood on them?"

The boy glanced around the courtroom, confused.

"I don't know, sir." "I see. Now between the first and second times you saw them, did you hear the discharge of a pistol, Laertes?"

He shook his head. "I can't say that I did."

"And yet they had only gone, to quote you again, 'a few minutes' before you saw them a second time. Surely they were close enough for you to have heard a pistol shot."

The boy frowned, looking as if he were trying to figure out the right answer to a math question. "Maybe I heard one and forgot it. It's been some months since."

"Yes, it has been a long time, hasn't it?" Blake said, smiling condescendingly. "Now, Laertes, you testified that after their arrest, you were able to identify Daley from amongst a large group of men assembled in the jail in Springfield. 'Freely and of your own accord,' my learned colleague, Mr. Sullivan, stated."

"That is correct, sir. I picked them out."

"But were not Daley and Halligan wearing manacles at the time?"

"They might of been."

"Were they not, in fact, the only two in the room who were handcuffed?"

"Maybe. Yes, I think they did have irons on."

"So in point of fact, it would have been easier to tell the accused from the others, would it not?"

"I remember him, sir," the boy said, fingering Daley. His tone now was peevish, almost truculent, but he also appeared on the verge of crying. "I saw him. I did."

"Did you indeed?" Blake said, smiling almost cruelly. "Now, Laertes. I wonder if you can help me with something."

The boy stared sullenly at Blake, from beneath his brows. He was wary of the man's questions.

"I am trying to understand exactly how this could have happened as you say it did. Between the time it took from when you first saw these men pass by on the turnpike and when you next saw them leading the horse up the mountain, you are absolutely certain that only fifteen minutes had elapsed?"

"Yes." But there was in his answer now a certain hesitancy, a tentativeness that hadn't been there before.

Blake walked over to the jury, his broad back to the witness so the boy could not see the expression on his face.

"Are we to believe, Laertes, that it took a mere fifteen minutes for these two men to do all they are accused of doing?" He didn't wait for nor did he expect an answer. As he spoke, he passed in front of the jurors, pausing to eye each in turn. He counted off his points on his fat fingers. "To accost Mr. Lyon on a well-traveled road in the broad light of day. To shoot him and pull him from his horse. To engage him in what must surely have been a fierce struggle, Mr. Lyon having been a young laboring man of robust build who was fighting for his very life. To beat him so savagely that his skull was caved in and that one pistol was broken in the bargain. To rifle through his person as well as his saddlebags and portmanteau to find where he kept his money. Afterwards, to drag him down into the river, there to locate and place on him a stone weighing some sixty pounds. Having accomplished all of this, I might add, without getting their trousers wet or being splattered with what must have been an abundance of blood. Finally, to drive the horse up the mountain several hundred yards. And to do all of this in a mere fifteen minutes."

He had stopped in front of the blacksmith and was looking down at the man. The blacksmith in turn was staring at the boy, watching him intently. "Frankly, young man, your entire tale strains belief," Blake said. "What I also find puzzling is the fact that you are able to recall some things so vividly but others not in the least. You remember Mr. Daley's face with such unassailable assurance, but cannot recall hearing a gunshot. You were later able to pick out the horse as being the one you saw up on the mountain, but when you first spotted him, you did not remember much about the animal. You recall the men returning but not whether their trousers were wet or had any blood on them after such a sanguinary attack." The lawyer turned and walked back over to where Laertes Fuller sat. "Come, come, young man. Do you really expect us to believe that it happened as you say it happened?"

"Yes," the boy said, his voice near to cracking. His eyes were moist, and it was obvious to all he was fighting back tears.

"It has been a long day, Laertes," Blake said with a paternal air of kindness. The boy looked warily up at him. "We are all very tired. Why don't you just tell us what really happened that day so we can all go home?"

"But... I told you. I did."

"You told us a story that does not make much sense. What did you really see?"

The boy's face had reddened. He looked first toward the prosecution table and then over at the jury, before turning to look on Blake again.