There is no end to the series of improbabilities growing out of the
prosecutor's story.

One thing especially deserves notice. Wherever Goodridge searches, he
always finds something; and what he finds, he always can identify and
swear to, as being his. The thing found has always some marks by which he
knows it. Yet he never finds much. He never finds the mass of his lost
treasure. He finds just enough to be evidence, and no more.

These are the circumstances which tend to raise doubts of the truth of the
prosecutor's relation. It is for the jury to say, whether it would be safe
to convict any man for this robbery until these doubts shall be cleared
up. No doubt they are to judge him candidly; but they are not to make
every thing yield to a regard to his reputation, or a desire to vindicate
him from the suspicion of a fraudulent prosecution.

He stands like other witnesses, except that he is a very interested
witness; and he must hope for credit, if at all, from the consistency and
general probability of the facts to which he testifies. The jury will not
convict the prisoners to save the prosecutor from disgrace. He has had
every opportunity of making out his case. If any person in the State could
have corroborated any part of his story, that person he could have
produced. He has had the benefit of full time, and good counsel, and of
the Commonwealth's process, to bring in his witnesses. More than all, he
has had an opportunity of telling his own story, with the simplicity that
belongs to truth, if it were true, and the frankness and earnestness of an
honest man, if he be such. It is for the jury to say, under their oaths,
how he has acquitted himself in these particulars, and whether he has left
their minds free from doubt as to the truth of his narration.