o the public service. Now, here are five marks all of
which ought to be found in Junius. They are all five found in Francis.
We do not believe that more than two of them can be found in any other
person whatever. If this agreement does not settle the question, there
is an end of all reasoning on circumstantial evidence.[46]

Here the five points or marks of similarity between the writer of the
letters and Philip Francis are of such diversity that it would be an
extraordinary coincidence if there had happened to be two men whom they
would fit: where so many lines converge so closely at a single point it
would hardly be possible for them to meet on more than one person.

The following brief extract from Webster's argument in the White Murder
Case shows the same sort of convergence of similarities: each
circumstance in itself is hardly strong enough to furnish ground for an
argument on analogy, but taken all together they point irresistibly in
one direction, namely, to the fact of a conspiracy.

Let me ask your attention, then, in the first place, to those
appearances, on the morning after the murder, which have a tendency to
show that it was done in pursuance of a preconcerted plan of operation.
What are they? A man was found murdered in his bed. No stranger had done
the deed, no one unacquainted with the house had done it. It was
apparent that somebody within had opened, and that somebody without had
entered. There had obviously and certainly been concert and cooperation.
The inmates of the house were not alarmed when the murder was
perpetrated. The assassin had entered without any riot or any violence.
He had found the way prepared before him. The house had been previously
opened. The window was unbarred from within, and its fastening
unscrewed. There was a lock on the door of the chamber in which Mr.
White slept, but the key was gone. It had been taken away and secreted.
The footsteps of the murderer were visible, outdoors, tending toward the
window. The plank by which he entered the window still remained. The
road he pursued had thus been prepared for him. The victim was slain,
and the murderer had escaped. Everything indicated that somebody within
had cooperated with somebody without. Everything proclaimed that some of
the inmates, or somebody having access to the house, had had a hand in
the murder. On the face of the circumstances, it was apparent,
therefore, that this was a premeditated, concerted murder; that th