Knowing, from this brief of their supposed case, exactly what she had to apprehend from them, and anxious to prove triumphantly that she and her sisters did not make the "rappings" with their knees, Mrs. Fish rushed into print, and challenged the doctors to a more public investigation, to be made by three men and three women, the latter of whom were to disrobe the "mediums," if they so desired. The doctors, of course, accepted. In her account of this scene, Mrs. Fish speaks of herself and her sister Maggie as "two young creatures thus baited as it were by cruel enemies." It should be remembered at this point that her age at that time was about thirty-four years, whilst that of Maggie was only eleven! So much for the disingenuousness of the narrator. She herself says that during the test, Maggie and she sat on a sofa together a long time and no raps came. The watch was too close. Then a zealous and indiscreet friend rapped on the back of her chair, and to shield herself from seeming complicity, she rebuked him with great ostentation. How kindly she felt toward fraud, however, is shown by the excuses which she makes for his conduct. "It was certainly a severe and cruel ordeal for us," she goes on, "as we sat there under that accusation, surrounded by all these men, authorities, some of them persecutors, _while the raps, usually so ready and familiar, would not come to our relief. Some few and faint ones did indeed come--some nine or ten. The doctors say in their account that it was while they intermitted the holding of our feet_. Such was not my _impression_, but _I_ attach _small importance_ to that." There were several sittings of the investigators in company with the "mediums," and Mrs. Underhill asserts that at times plentiful "rappings" were heard, both when their feet and knees were held and when they were not held. And then she introduces this weak and transparent piece of hypocrisy so familiar to those who have ever had to do with so-called "mediums": "We are now familiar with the fact that spirits often refuse to act in the presence of those who bring to the occasion, not a candid and fair spirit of inquiry for the satisfaction of an honest skepticism, but a bitter and offensive bigotry of prejudice and invincible hostility, which does not really seek, but rather repels the truth, and but little deserves the favor of its exhibition to them by the spirits." The further report of the doctors contained these points: