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Emily Goodridge's health was much improved by her journey to the North, and every year the same party repeated it. I need hardly say that during my clerkship I was a constant visitor at the house of Mr. Goodridge, and that his daughter and myself were the best of friends. Flora used to go there every afternoon; but she could not venture out, as I did, in the evening air.
But the jury will consider whether this circumstance does not bear quite as strongly the other way, and whether they can believe that robbers could have left this money, either from accident or design. The robbers, by Goodridge's account, were extremely careful to search his person.
But, under the circumstances of this case, the mere finding of money in their house, and that only in places where the prosecutor had previously been, is no evidence at all. With respect to the gold pieces, it is certainly true that they were found in Goodridge's track. They were found only where he had been, and might have put them.
Whatever may have been Goodridge's motive in his attempt to ruin the innocent men he falsely accused, it is certain that Webster saved these men from the unjust punishment of an imputed crime. Only the skeleton of his argument before the jury has been preserved; but what we have of it evidently passed under his revision.
He certainly did not at the time think it to be Goodridge's, and he left it in the drawer where he found it. Before he saw it again, the prosecutor had been in that room, and was in or near it when the sheriff was again called in, and asked to put that bill in his pocket-book. How do the jury know that this was the same note which Leavitt had before seen? Or suppose it was.
Goodridge says that no person knew of his having put his bank-notes in that situation. On the first attack, however, they proceeded to open one garment after another, until they penetrated to the treasure, which was beneath them all. The testimony of Mr. Howard is material. He examined Goodridge's pistol, which was found on the spot, and thinks it had not been fired at all.
Leavitt says he found a note in a drawer in a room in which none of the party had before been; that he thought it an uncurrent or counterfeit note, and not a part of Goodridge's money, and left it where he found it, without further notice. An hour or two afterward, Upton perceived a note in the same drawer, Goodridge being then with or near him, and called to Leavitt.
Leavitt told him that he had discovered that note before, but that it could not be Goodridge's. It was then examined. Leavitt says he looked at it, and saw writing on the back of it. Upton says he looked at it, and saw writing on the back of it. He says also that it was shown to Goodridge, who examined it in the same way that he and Leavitt examined it.
Notwithstanding it so fully resembled, in all points, the money they were looking for, and notwithstanding they also saw writing on the back of it, which, they must know, if they read it, would probably have shown where it came from, neither of them did so far examine it as to see any proof of its being Goodridge's. This is hardly to be believed.
Leavitt carried it to Coffin's; in the evening he produced it, and, after having been handed about for some time among the company, it turns out to be Goodridge's note, and to have upon it infallible marks of identity. How do the jury know that a sleight of hand had not changed the note at Coffin's? It is sufficient to say, the note might have been changed.
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