be her kinsman opposite, whose
life for the last twenty years has been made wretched by a wicked
longing after the patrimony of his brother.

"Gentlemen of the jury, there sits my client with as loving a friend
on one side as ever woman had, and with her only child on the other.
During the incidents of this trial the nature of the life she has
led during the last twenty years,--since the period of that terrible
crime with which she is charged,--has been proved before you. I may
fearlessly ask you whether so fair a life is compatible with the
idea of guilt so foul? I have known her intimately during all those
years,--not as a lawyer, but as a friend,--and I confess that the
audacity of this man Dockwrath, in assailing such a character
with such an accusation, strikes me almost with admiration. What!
Forgery!--for that, gentlemen of the jury, is the crime with which
she is substantially charged. Look at her, as she sits there! That
she, at the age of twenty, or not much more,--she who had so well
performed the duties of her young life, that she should have forged
a will,--have traced one signature after another in such a manner as
to have deceived all those lawyers who were on her track immediately
after her husband's death! For, mark you, if this be true, with
her own hand she must have done it! There was no accomplice there.
Look at her! Was she a forger? Was she a woman to deceive the sharp
bloodhounds of the law? Could she, with that young baby on her bosom,
have wrested from such as him"--and as he spoke he pointed with his
finger, but with a look of unutterable scorn, to Joseph Mason, who
was sitting opposite to him--"that fragment of his old father's
property which he coveted so sorely? Where had she learned such
skilled artifice? Gentlemen, such ingenuity in crime as that has
never yet been proved in a court of law, even against those who have
spent a life of wretchedness in acquiring such skill; and now you are
asked to believe that such a deed was done by a young wife, of whom
all that you know is that her conduct in every other respect had been
beyond all praise! Gentlemen, I might have defied you to believe
this accusation had it even been supported by testimony of a high
character. Even in such case you would have felt that there was more
behind than had been brought to your knowledge. But now, having seen,
as you have, of what nature are the witnesses on whose testimony she
has been impeached, it is impossi