also should be your story.  The woman,—­I must describe her in this way lest I should do her an injustice by calling her Mrs. Smith, or do my client an injustice by calling her Mrs. Caldigate,—­has told you that this envelope, with an enclosure which she produced, reached her at Nobble through the post from Sydney.  To that statement I call upon you to give no credit.  A letter so sent would, as you have been informed, bear two postmarks, those of Sydney and of Nobble.  This envelope bears one only.  But that is not all.  I shall call before you two gentlemen experienced in affairs of the post-office, and they will tell you that the postmarks on this envelope, both that of the town, Sydney, and that by which the postage stamp is obliterated, are cleaner, finer, and better perceived than they would have been had it passed in ordinary course through the post-office.  Letters in the post-office are hurried quickly through the operation of stamping, so that one passing over the other while the stamping ink is still moist, will to some extent blot and blur that with which it has come in contact.  He will produce some dozens taken at random, and will show that with them all such has been the case.  This blotting, this smudging, is very slight, but it exists; it is always there.  He will tell you that this envelope has been stamped as one and alone,—­by itself,—­with peculiar care;—­and I shall ask you to believe that the impression has been procured by fraud in the Sydney post-office.  If that be so; if in such a case as this fraud be once discovered, then I say that the whole case will fall to the ground, and that I shall be justified in telling you that no word that you have heard from these four witnesses is worthy of belief.

’Nothing worthy of belief has been adduced against my client unless that envelope be so.  That those four persons have conspired together for the sake of getting money is clear enough.  To their evidence I shall come presently, and shall endeavour to show you why you should discredit them.  At present I am concerned simply with this envelope, on which I think that the case hangs.  As for the copy of the register, it is nothing.  It would be odd indeed if in any conspiracy so much as that could not be brought up.  Had such a register been found in the archives of any church, however humble, and had an attested copy been produced, that would have been much.  But this is nothing.  Nor is the alleged letter from Mr. Allan anything.  Were the letter genuine it would show that such a marriage had been contemplated, not that it had been solemnised.  We have, however, no evidence to make us believe that the letter is genuine.  But this envelope,’—­and he again stretched it out towards the jury,—­’is evidence.  The impression of a post-office stamp has often been accepted as evidence.  But the evidence may be false evidence, and it is for us to see whether it may not probably be so now.