r?" was instantly solved the moment a matron
in good health heard that the wife of Farmer A, or Farmer B, was
stricken down by fever, and needed a friendly nurse to sit by her
bedside all night, though she had herself been toiling hard all day.
Every thing philanthropists mean when they talk of brotherhood and
sisterhood among men and women was condensed in that homely phrase, "the
neighbors." "Oh!" said Webster, ruefully, "if the neighbors think I may
be of service, of course I must go";--and, with his three companions, he
was soon seated in the stage for Ipswich, where he arrived at about
midnight. The court met the next morning; and his management of the case
is still considered one of his masterpieces of legal acumen and
eloquence. His cross-examination of Goodridge rivalled, in mental
torture, every thing martyrologists tell us of the physical agony
endured by the victim of the inquisitor, when roasted before slow fires
or stretched upon the rack. Still it seemed impossible to assign any
motive for the self-robbery and the self-maiming of Goodridge, which any
judge or jury would accept as reasonable. The real motive has never been
discovered. Webster argued that the motive might have originated in a
desire to escape from the payment of his debts, or in a whimsical
ambition to have his name sounded all over Maine and Massachusetts as
the heroic tradesman who had parted with his money only when overpowered
by superior force. It is impossible to say what motives may impel men
who are half-crazed by vanity, or half-demonized by malice. Coleridge
describes Iago's hatred of Othello as the hatred which a base nature
instinctively feels for a noble one, and his assignment of motives for
his acts as the mere "motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity."

Whatever may have been Goodridge's motive in his attempt to ruin the
innocent men he falsely accused, it is certain that Webster saved these
men from the unjust punishment of an imputed crime. Only the skeleton of
his argument before the jury has been preserved; but what we have of it
evidently passed under his revision. He knew that the plot of Goodridge
had been so cunningly contrived, that every man of the twelve before
him, whose verdict was to determine the fate of his clients, was
inwardly persuaded of their guilt. Some small marked portions of the
money which Goodridge swore he had on his person on the night of the
pretended robbery were found in their house. Circumstan