yah'd!" at me with lungs that would have
been strong enough to set their furnaces going or blow them out.

After the petition was tried, and I had been successful, they changed
their minds and their language. This same British public, which not
long before had "yah! yah'd!" at me, now came forward with true
British hoorays and bravos. "'Orkins for ever!" "Hooray for Orkins!"
"Bravo, Orkins!" "Hooray! a ---- hooray! Hooray for Wagga Wagga!"

This last cry had reference to a village in Australia where the great
Tichborne fraud had its origin; where the first advertisement of the
dowager seeking her lost son was shown to the butcher in his own
little shop, the son of the respectable butcher of Wapping.

The number of people who professed to believe in the Claimant long
after he was sent to penal servitude was prodigious, although not
one of them could have given a reason for his faith, or pointed to
a particle of unimpeachable evidence to support his opinion. It had
never been anything other than feeling in the dark for what never
existed.

CHAPTER XXX.

AN EXPERT IN HANDWRITING--"DO YOU KNOW JOE BROWN?"

I always took great interest in the class of expert who professed to
identify handwriting. Experts of all classes give evidence only as to
opinion; nevertheless, those who decide upon handwriting believe
in their infallibility. Cross-examination can never shake their
confidence. Some will pin their faith even to the crossing of a T,
"the perpendicularity, my lord," of a down-stroke, or the "obliquity"
of an upstroke.

Mr. Nethercliffe, one of the greatest in his profession, and a
thorough believer in all he said, had been often cross-examined by
me, and we understood each other very well. I sometimes indulged in a
little chaff at his expense; indeed, I generally had a little "fling"
at him when he was in the box.

It is remarkable that, at the time I speak of, Judges, as a rule, had
wonderful confidence in this class of expert, and never seemed to
think of forming any opinion of their own. A witness swore to certain
peculiarities; the Judge looked at them and at once saw them, too
often without considering that peculiarities are exactly the things
that forgers imitate.

"You find the same peculiarity here, my lord, and the same peculiarity
there, my lord; consequently I say it is the same handwriting."

In days long gone by the eminent expert in this science had a great
reputation. As I often met him