Assumpsit upon an account annexed to the writ, against which the defendants filed an account in set-off.

The plaintiff offered in evidence a shingle, on which it was proved that his intestate entered from day to day in the woods an account of the timber hewed by him each day, under a contract with the defendants. No more of the evidence is given in the report of the trial, and no further description of the shingle; but it was referred to in the report. To the admission of this shingle the counsel for the defendant objected, but Weston C. J., before whom the action was tried, admitted it.

The defendants offered one Fiske as a witness, to whose admission the plaintiff objected on the ground of interest. It appeared,' that the plaintiff had attached in this suit the land of the defendants, which they had subsequently conveyed by deed of warranty to Fiske, the proposed witness, and the witness had conveyed the same land by deed of warranty to another. The witness was rejected, as incompetent, on the ground of, interest. The verdict was for the plaintiff, .and was to be set aside if the shingle should have been excluded, or the witness ought to have been received.

There was also a motion to set aside the verdict as against evidence.

1. The shingle was improperly admitted in evidence.

All the cases on the subject of admitting books have gone only to books, and from the necessity of the case. When- admitted, they are first to be examined, and are open to all possible objections.

To bo evidence, the book must be the register of his daily doings not only with one man alone, but with others, and the whole book is subject to examination. It did not appear, nor will it be pretended, but that the intestate could keep a book, and did in fact keep one in writing in which he made his charges generally. Nor was there any evidence to shew, that he had not transferred the charges, if such they may be called, to a leger. No case has gone farther than to admit the book, or books, in which the whole charges in his dealings are made. This can be no better, than for a trader or mechanic, to bring in a loose leaf of paper with charges or marks on it against one man only. It does not come within the principles, on which books have been admitted. Dunn v. Whitney, 1 Fairf. 9; Prince v. Smith, 4 Mass. R. 445; 3 Dane, 320.

2. The witness ought not to have been rejected.

If Fis'ke, the person offered as a witness, had any interest in the result of the suit, it was a balanced one, and the case comes within the principle of Bean v. Bean, 12 Mass. R. 20. If Fiske was exposed to liability on his covenants by reason of the attachment, he had a remedy on the covenants in his deed from the defendants to recover the same amount. The possibility of interest is too remote and contingent to exclude the witness.

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