his name. It was
quite true, he said, that they had been equally unable to prove that
he had done so; but that amounted to nothing; the "onus probandi" lay
with the accusing side. There was the signature, and it was for them
to prove that it was not that which it pretended to be. Lady Mason
had proved that it was so; and because that had then been held to
be sufficient, they now, after twenty years, took this means of
invalidating her testimony. From that he went to the evidence given
at the present trial, beginning with the malice and interested
motives of Dockwrath. Against three of them only was it needful that
he should allege anything, seeing that the statements made by the
others were in no way injurious to Lady Mason,--if the statements
made by those three were not credible. Torrington, for instance, had
proved that other deed; but what of that, if on the fatal 14th of
July Sir Joseph Mason had executed two deeds? As to Dockwrath,--that
his conduct had been interested and malicious there could be no
doubt; and he submitted to the jury that he had shown himself to be a
man unworthy of credit. As to Kenneby,--that poor weak creature, as
Mr. Furnival in his mercy called him,--he, Mr. Furnival, could not
charge his conscience with saying that he believed him to have been
guilty of any falsehood. On the contrary, he conceived that Kenneby
had endeavoured to tell the truth. But he was one of those men whose
minds were so inconsequential that they literally did not know truth
from falsehood. He had not intended to lie when he told the jury
that he was not quite sure he had never witnessed two signatures by
Sir Joseph Mason on the same day, nor did he lie when he told them
again that he had witnessed three. He had meant to declare the truth;
but he was, unfortunately, a man whose evidence could not be of
much service in any case of importance, and could be of no service
whatever in a criminal charge tried, as was done in this instance,
more than twenty years after the alleged commission of the offence.
With regard to Bridget Bolster, he had no hesitation whatever in
telling the jury that she was a woman unworthy of belief,--unworthy
of that credit which the jury must place in her before they could
convict any one on her unaided testimony. It must have been clear to
them all that she had come into court drilled and instructed to make
one point-blank statement, and to stick to that. She had refused to
give any evidence as