that I presided over. The object is
not to show the horrible details of the deed, but my mode of dealing
with the facts, for it is in the elimination of the false from the
true that the work of a Judge must consist, otherwise his office is a
useless form. I shall give this case, therefore, more in detail than I
otherwise should.

The case was that of Horsford, in the year 1898, at Huntingdon
Assizes. I say now, long after the event, the murderer was not
improperly described by the _Daily News_ as the greatest monster of
our criminal annals, and yet even in that case some kind-hearted
people said I had gone quite _to the limits of a Judge's rights_ in
summing up the case. Let me say a word about circumstantial evidence.
Some writers have spoken of it as a kind of "dangerous innovation in
our criminal procedure." It is actually almost the only evidence
that is obtainable in all great crimes, and it is the best and most
reliable.

You may draw wrong impressions from it, I grant, but so you may from
the evidence of witnesses where it is _doubtful_; but you cannot fail
to draw the right ones where the facts are not doubtful. If it is
capable of a wrong inference, a Judge should be absolutely positive in
his direction to the jury not to draw it.

I have witnessed many great trials for murder, but do not remember one
where there was an eye-witness to the deed. How is it possible,
then, to bring home the charge to the culprit unless you rely on
circumstantial evidence? Circumstantial evidence is the evidence of
circumstances--facts that speak for themselves and that cannot be
contradicted. Circumstances have no motive to deceive, while human
testimony is too often the product of every kind of motive.

The history of this case is extremely simple. The accused, Walter
Horsford, aged thirty-six, was a farmer of Spaldwick. The person
murdered, Annie Holmes, was a widow whose age was thirty-eight years.
She had resided for several months at St. Neots, where she died on
the night of January 7. She had been married, and lost her husband
thirteen years ago. On his death he left two children, Annie and
Percy. The latter was sixteen years of age and the girl fourteen.
The prisoner was a cousin of the deceased woman. While she lived at
Stonely the man had been in the habit of visiting her, and had become
an intimate member of the family.

In the month of October the prisoner was married to a young woman
named Bessie ----. The wido