As money ameliorates grief, business prevents grief from taking possession of the mind; and so we need not be surprised that within a week Mr Monypenny served Mr Whitelaw with a summons to appear before the fifteen Scotch lords who sat round a table in the form of a horse-shoe in the Parliament House of Edinburgh, or Court of Session, and there be ordered to pay to the pursuer or plaintiff the said two thousand merks, which devolved upon him, as the heir of his sister, in consequence of the dissolution of the marriage within a year and a day, without a living child being born thereof. Nor was Mr Whitelaw, angry as he was and withal confident of success, slow to give in his defence to the effect that the child had been born alive, and had been heard to scream--a defence which startled Writer George mightily; for it was the first intimation he had got of the important fact, and his experience told him how supple Scotch witnesses are--even to the extent that it took no fewer than fifteen learned judges to get the subtle thing called truth out of the subtle minds of “the canny people;” but he had no alternative than to consent to the commission to Maister Wylie, advocate, to take a proof of the defender’s averment and report. And so accordingly the proceedings went on. Mr Advocate Wylie sat in one of the rooms adjoining the court to take the depositions of the witnesses, and Mr Williamson was there for Mr Whitelaw, and Mr Hamilton for Mr Monypenny. The first witness called was Mrs Jean Gilchrist, who swore very honestly that she heard the child scream; and Robina Proudfoot swore as honestly to the same thing; nor could all the efforts of Mr Advocate Hamilton shake those sturdy witnesses, if it was not that, as so often happens with Scotch witnesses, the more the advocate wrestled with them, the more firm they waxed. Nor need we say that the philosophical axiom, that the intensity of belief is always inversely as the reason for it, never had weight with our Scotch judges. But then came the difficulty about the _causa scientiæ_; for neither of the two witnesses could swear that she _saw_ the child alive and after the scream, inasmuch as the child was certainly dead before they saw the body; so it was only at best a strong presumption that the cry actually did come from that child. The witnesses dispersed these quibbles, and insisted that, as there was no other child in that room, the cry could come from no other source than Mrs Whitelaw’s baby. But the crowning witness was to come--Mrs Euphan Lythgow herself, who would put an end to all doubts; and come she did. Asked whether she delivered Mrs Whitelaw of a child on the night in question, her answer was in the affirmative. “Was it a boy or a girl?” “A _callant_, sir,” was the answer; for Scotch witnesses _will_ use their own terms, let counsel do what they please. “And,” added Mrs Lythgow, “he was to be baptized after his father when the time came. He was to be called Tammas.”