I will not deny that this narrative, which I feel I have but coldly and feebly rendered from its earnest, tearful tenderness, as related by Mary Woodley, affected me considerably—­case-hardened, as, to use an old bar-pun, we barristers are supposed to be; nor will the reader be surprised to hear that suspicions, graver even than those which pointed to forgery, were evoked by the sad history.  Much musing upon the strange circumstances thus disclosed, and profoundly cogitative on the best mode of action to be pursued, the “small hours,” the first of them at least, surprised me in my arm-chair.  I started up, and hastened to bed, well knowing from experience that a sleepless vigil is a wretched preparative for a morrow of active exertion, whether of mind or body.

I was betimes in court the next morning, and Mr. Barnes, proud as a peacock of figuring as an attorney in an important civil suit, was soon at my side.  The case had excited more interest than I had supposed, and the court was very early filled, Mary Woodley and her grandfather soon arrived; and a murmur of commiseration ran through the auditory as they took their seats by the side of Barnes.  There was a strong bar arrayed against us; and Mr. Silas Thorndyke, I noticed, was extremely busy and important with whisperings and suggestions to his solicitor and counsel—­received, of course, as such meaningless familiarities usually are, with barely civil indifference.

Twelve common jurors were called and sworn well and truly to try the issue, and I arose amidst breathless silence to address them.  I at once frankly stated the circumstances under which the brief had come into my hands, and observed, that if, for lack of advised preparation, the plaintiff’s case failed on that day, another trial, under favor of the court above, would, I doubt not, at no distant period of time reverse the possibly at present unfavorable decision.  “My learned friends on the other side,” I continued, “smile at this qualified admission of mine:  let them do so.  If they apparently establish to-day the validity of a will which strips an only child of the inheritance bequeathed by her father, they will, I tell them emphatically, have obtained but a temporary triumph for a person who—­if I, if you, gentlemen of the jury, are to believe the case intended to be set up as a bar to the plantiff’s claim—­has succeeded by the grossest brutality, the most atrocious devices, in bending the mind of the deceased Mrs. Thorndyke to his selfish purposes.  My learned friend need not interrupt me; I shall pursue these observations for the present no further—­merely adding that I, that his lordship, that you, gentlemen of the jury, will require of him the strictest proof—­proof clear as light—­that the instrument upon which he relies to defeat the equitable, the righteous claim of the young and amiable person by my side, is genuine, and not, as I verily believe “—­I looked, as I spoke, full in the face of Thorndyke—­“FORGED.”