As has been said, S. J.-B. had everything to gain from publicity, from a full exposure of the facts. The worst she had done had been to state her case in public without fear of persons, without much tact and discretion, though with no exaggeration of the actual truth. The public had already passed judgment on her. She was now on her defence, desirous only of asking her opponents, under cross-examination, to deny the truth of what she had said. But the law of libel is an intricate and parlous thing. S. J.-B. had been told by several people of standing—including her teacher and his assistant—that Professor Christison’s assistant had been a ringleader in the riot; but she did not know of her own knowledge that he had been so. “I wished,” she says, “to plead the substantial truth of my statement; but, being, of course, ignorant of Scotch law, I was overruled by my Counsel, among whom was the Lord Advocate of Scotland (Young), on the ground that I could not _personally_ prove the truth of what I had said, as indeed I did not know the young man by sight, and it would be held an aggravation of the injury to plead ‘Veritas’ in a matter which was, after all, only one of hearsay. I was assured that, if the case came to trial, abundant opportunity would be given to prove the young man’s real conduct in the matter.” This opportunity, however, was relentlessly withheld. The case for the defence was one to rejoice the heart of a brilliant counsel, being full of technical opportunity,—and to a brilliant counsel it fell. So entirely did Mr. Shand (afterwards Lord Shand) rely on his own bow and spear to win the day,—and it must be admitted that there was nothing else to rely on—that he dared to risk the conclusions which must inevitably be drawn from his omission to call the pursuer as a witness on his own side; he dared to provoke a laugh by saying that Mr. C. “was not so fond of public appearances as the defendant.” He laid down in his opening statement the law that must govern the case, and with dogged tenacity, he brought the Judge and everyone else in Court to heel. Lord Mure, as it chanced, was easily led. The choice of a Judge in Scotland lies with the pursuer, and in any case it might not have been easy to find one in those days who had a prejudice in favour of women doctors. One is glad to know that the protagonist appeared “cool and collected” to the indifferent observer, but she must have been on the rack much of the time, for the “substantial truth and right” for which she longed, got no chance at all, or rather they saved their lives only by losing them, so to speak; and that is one of time’s revenges that youth cannot foresee. The full report of the case appeared in the _Scotsman_ of May 31st and June 1st. The following extracts are taken mainly from the Edinburgh _Evening Courant_, because they are slightly abbreviated, and because they appeared in a paper unfriendly to the cause of the women.