One of the defendants had been for some weeks in Newburyport, the other passed the bridge from New Hampshire at twelve o'clock on the 19th of December, 1816. At this time, Goodridge had not yet arrived at Exeter, twelve or fourteen miles from the bridge. How, then, could either of the defendants know that he was coming? Besides, he says that nobody, as far as he is aware, knew on the road that he had money, and nothing happened till he reached Exeter, according to his account, from which it might be conjectured that such was the case. Here, as he relates it, it became known that he had pistols; and he must wish you to infer that the plan to rob him was laid here, at Exeter, by some of the persons who inferred that he had money from his being armed. Who were these persons? Certainly not the defendants, or either of them. Certainly not Taber. Certainly not Jackman. Were they persons of suspicious characters? Was he in a house of a suspicious character? On this point he gives us no information. He has either not taken the pains to inquire, or he chooses not to communicate the result of his inquiries. Yet nothing could be more important, since he seems compelled to lay the scene of the plot against him at Exeter, than to know who the persons were that he saw, or who saw him, at that place. On the face of the facts now proved, nothing could be more improbable than that the plan of robbery was concerted at Exeter. If so, why should those who concerted it send forward to Newburyport to engage the defendants, especially as they did not know that they were there? What should induce any persons so suddenly to apply to the defendants to assist in a robbery? There was nothing in their personal character or previous history that should induce this. Nor was there time for all this. If the prosecutor had not lingered on the road, for reasons not yet discovered, he must have been in Newburyport long before the time at which he states the robbery to have been committed. How, then, could any one expect to leave Exeter, come to Newburyport, fifteen miles, there look out for and find out assistants for a highway robbery, and get back two miles to a convenient place for the commission of the crime? That any body should have undertaken to act thus is wholly improbable; and, in point of fact, there is not the least proof of any body's travelling, that afternoon, from Exeter to Newburyport, or of any person who was at the tavern at Exeter having left it that afternoon. In all probability, nothing of this sort could have taken place without being capable of detection and proof. In every particular, the prosecutor has wholly failed to show the least probability of a plan to rob him having been laid at Exeter.