"What I mean to assert," said Ralph Sturgis, with quiet conviction, "is that every crime is its own historian; that all its minutest details are written in circumstantial evidence as completely as an eye-witness could see them,--aye, more fully and more truly than they could be described by the criminal himself." The reporter was a man of about thirty, whose regular features bore the unmistakable stamp of intelligence and refinement. In repose, they wore an habitual expression of introspective concentration, which might have led a careless observer to class Ralph Sturgis in the category of aimless dreamers. But a single flash of the piercing gray eyes generally sufficed to dispel any such impression; and told of keen perception and underlying power. The mouth was firm and kind; the bearing that of a gentleman and a man of education. "But," objected the host, "you surely do not mean to express a belief in the infallibility of circumstantial evidence?" "Why not?" "Because you must know as well as any one how misleading uncorroborated circumstantial evidence is. I do not forget what remarkable results you have often accomplished for the _Daily Tempest_ in detecting and following up clues to which the official detectives were blind. But, frankly, were not your conclusions usually the result of lucky guesses, which would have remained comparatively useless as evidence had they not been subsequently proved correct by direct testimony?" "Let me reply to your question by another, Sprague," answered Sturgis. "When you draw a check, does the paying teller at the bank require the testimony of witnesses to your signature before admitting its genuineness?" "No; of course not." "Precisely. He probably knows the signature of Harvey M. Sprague, the depositor, better than he does the face of Sprague, the artist. And yet the evidence here is purely circumstantial. I know of at least one recent instance in which the officials of a New York bank placed their implicit reliance upon circumstantial evidence of this sort, in spite of the direct testimony of the depositor, who was willing to acknowledge the genuineness of a check to which his name had been forged." "I suppose you refer to the Forsyth case," said Sprague; "but you must remember that Colonel Forsyth was actuated by the desire to shield the forger, who was his own scapegrace son." "That is just the point," replied Sturgis; "another witness will be biased by his interests or prejudices, blinded by jealousy, love or hatred, or handicapped by overzealousness, stupidity, lack of memory, or what not. Circumstantial evidence is always impartial, truthful, absolute. When the geologist reads the history of the earth, as it is written in its crust; when a Kepler or a Newton formulates the immutable laws of the universe, as they are recorded in the motions of the heavenly bodies, they draw their conclusions from evidence which is entirely circumstantial."