A kind of logic common at the time, and which, indeed, touched upon the most obscure question of metaphysics, and not very satisfactory to Mr Bayne, who, however, knew the subtle character of the Scotch mind too well to try a fall with so acute a dialectician. So, altogether disappointed with his precognition he left and came away, meeting in the passage Mr Pollock, who had been with Mrs Macintosh, and was now on his way to Jean Gilchrist. They were very intimate, and did not hesitate to compare notes, the result of which was that the case was to realise once more the truth of the toast generally drunk by Edinburgh practitioners at the end of the session, “The glorious uncertainty;” and if Mr Pollock thought so before he examined Jean Gilchrist, his opinion must have been pretty well confirmed by what she said. The case, in short, was not one in which there is conflicting evidence, and where the judges can make out the weight by a hair of prejudice; it was a case in which there was no evidence at all as to which of the girls was the heir; but, then, it was just on account of this equipoise that the two claimants, Martha, helped by her mother on the one side, and Sarah, supported by her lover, Walkinshaw, on the other, waxed the more bitter; and the contention which had so long raged in Gorthley House became hotter and hotter. Nor need we fancy that the writers would try to get the right compromised in some way, where they had so good a chance of making a money certainty out of a moral uncertainty; and so the case went into court under two competing briefs, that is just two claims by the daughters, each insisting to be served heir. The witnesses, whose precognitions we have given, were examined; and a great number of servants who had been in the family, who swore that Gorthley himself always called Sarah Miss Bruce, and Mrs Bruce always called Martha by that dignified title, so that the servants tried to please both master and mistress by calling the one daughter or the other miss, just according to the chance of being overheard by the heads of the house. When before the sheriff, and when the claims were equally suspended, a strange plea was set up by Sarah’s counsel, Mr Fotheringham, to the effect that, taking the question of priority of birth to be doubtful, the doubt could be resolved by a kind of _nobile officium_ on the part of the father as the head of the house, and that as Gorthley had declared for Sarah this should be held as sufficient; but Mr Maitland answered this by saying that the question being one of fact, and that fact coming more within the presumed knowledge of the mother, ought to be settled by the voice of the mother, who declared for Martha; and here again the argument being nearly equal, the judge on the inquest was nonplussed. And thus it came to pass that the old irony of the ancients, directed against a sow coming in place of Minerva as a judge of some very fine matter of truth, turned out to be