Leaves from an English Solicitor s Note Book. with me that women invariably make either very good or very bad witnesses, and you never can be certain beforehand which it will be. The widow was too frivolous, not to say frisky, and all my admonitions to her failed to make her grasp the seriousness of the situa tion. She had bought herself a charming bonnet of pearl gray, in which to appear in the witness box, and it was only owing to the blandishments of the oily tongued under taker that she was at last induced to appear in the more fitting head-covering of widow's weeds, and persuaded to keep the pearl gray for her first appearance at chapel on the next Sunday after she had succeeded in gaining her case, if she ever did so. She gave her evidence in chief admirably, being adroitly led by Mr. Gripper; it was when Mr. Smoothly, our opponent, rose to cross-examine that the tension of my anxiety commenced in real earnest. He commenced gently, very gently, and very insinuatingly and she was thrown ' off her guard, and gradually confided to him the whole story of her courtship, the humor ous circumstances attending the marriage cere mony itself, and then the varied incidents of their married life; he gently urging her on, as you may see an old cat playing with a mouse, now lightly tapping the luckless cap tive with a velvet paw to make it run a little, but keeping the cruel claw concealed just so long as there is sport to be got out of it; and so the game went on till you might have imagined you were hearing a gay and frivo lous girl telling a story of racy fun to an old bachelor uncle for his amusement; my heart sank within me as he got her to join him in ridiculing the bare idea of her having felt any love for the miserly old man who had cheated her with a gift of false diamonds, and when he cleverly got her to admit that it was an immense relief to her mind when at last he passed away in sleep, two days after the sign ing of the will. It was admirably clone on examination Mr. Smoothly's brought part, but out Mr. the Gripper details ofin her re-
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illness, details which were corroborated by the next witness, the medical man; and so our case was set on safer ground at the close of our evidence. Then Mr. Smoothly rose to open the case against us, which he did in an impassioned burst of forensic oratory, pouring out torrents of fiery indignation on the head of the heart less harpy who had married the friendless old man for his money, and for nothing else, and had persecuted him day and night till she had induced him, as she thought, to leave her all his money, frustrating his pious inten tion of benefiting the religious institutions to which he had been so devotedly attached in life. I wish I could reproduce the speech; it wound up by an assertion of his confident assurance that he would be able to satisfy the intelligent body of gentlemen, facing him in the jury box, beyond all prossibility of doubt that the will relied on was neither more nor less than a wicked forgery; that he would call before them a witness who, though of comparatively tender years, would give them the clearest evidence tjiat on that mo mentous day, the 18th of February, neither of the witnesses who had sworn with such categorical pertinacity to the signing and witnessing of the will on that day, had ever entered the house; (Here Mr. Gripper whis pered to me " The Lord hath delivered them unto our hands. Get the pancake witnesses up, but keep them out of sight,") and that he felt confident that the perjured haqiy would by their verdict be sent back to her home in Georgetown, disappointed, to end her days in ignominy, a very scorn and de rision to all them that are round about her. "Very fine," said Mr. Gripper to me as we left the court together at the end of the day, "and if he had only left the forgery alone, and relied on undue influence and in capacity, he would very likely have had the jury with him; but if he relies on the girl to upset our evidence of due execution, and the pancake witnesses swear up to the mark, it careful nursing of the old man during his last will recoil on their heads and, perhaps, turn
