not to be despised. Indeed, as to one point, that of the
approximate date of the execution of the tattooing, it is to my mind
final. Still, there does remain an enormous amount that must be accepted
or not, according as to whether or no credence can be placed in the
unsupported testimony of Miss Smithers, for we cannot call on a child so
young as the present Lord Holmhurst, to bear witness in a Court of
Justice. If Miss Smithers, for instance, is not speaking the truth when
she declares that the signature of the testator was tattooed upon her
under his immediate direction, or that it was tattooed in the presence of
the two sailors, Butt and Jones, whose signatures were also tattooed in
the presence of the testator and of each other--no will at all was
executed, and the plaintiff's case collapses, utterly, since, from the
very nature of the facts, evidence as to handwriting would, of course, be
useless. Now, I approach the decision of this point after anxious
thought and some hesitation. It is not a light thing to set aside a
formally executed document such as the will of Nov. 10, upon which the
defendants rely, and to entirely alter the devolution of a vast amount of
property upon the unsupported testimony of a single witness. It seems to
me, however, that there are two tests which the Court can more or less
set up as standards, wherewith to measure the truth of the matter. The
first of these is the accepted probability of the action of an individual
under any given set of circumstances, as drawn from our common knowledge
of human nature; and the second, the behaviour and tone of the witness,
both in the box and in the course of circumstances that led to her
appearance there. I will take the last of those two first, and I may as
well state, without further delay, that I am convinced of the truth of
the story told by Miss Smithers. It would to my mind be impossible for
any man, whose intelligence had been trained by years of experience in
this and other courts, and whose daily duty it is to discriminate as to
the credibility of testimony, to disbelieve the history so
circumstantially detailed in the box by Miss Smithers (Sensation). I
watched her demeanour both under examination and cross-examination very
closely indeed, and I am convinced that she was telling the absolute
truth so far as she knew it.
"And now to come to the second point. It has been suggested, as throwing
doubt upon Miss Smithers' story, that the existe
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