“And did you tell Lady Gorthley you went to Eppie?” inquired the discomfited writer.
“Gude faith na, she might hae asked back the five guineas,” answered Peggy; “and besides, if she got the truth, it was a’ ane to her, ye ken, where it cam’ frae; and you’ll be discreet and say naething.”
“Did you ask from the old woman the name of her who bore the mark?” rejoined Mr Bayne.
“Ay, but she said she didna like to spier that at the auld ane—Nick, ye ken—because he might have got angry and told her a lee, and that might hae brought me into a scrape wi’ her ladyship, who knew hersel which o’ her daughters bore the mark.”
“Very prudent,” muttered again the writer, as he rose, “this is a most satisfactory witness.”
And carrying this satisfaction along with him, he proceeded to the small garret occupied by Jean Gilchrist, the direction to which he had got from Mrs Macintosh. Believing as he did the statement made to him by the latter, he had very little hope of getting anything satisfactory out of his present witness, and wishing to keep her more to the point than he had been able to effect in the prior case, he assumed her presence at the birth, and came straight out with the question, whether she knew if there had been noticed on one of the children the mark of the strawberry.
“The strawberry?” said she, “ay, wi’ a’ wondered at that, but then it’s no uncommon things in weans to be marked in that way, so we sune got ower’t.”
“And was this mark on the child which was first born?” inquired he.
“I’ll tell you that, sir,” replied she, “if ye’ll tell me first which o’ the twa cam’ first into the world.”
Whereby Mr Bayne found himself where he was, in the hands of a Scotch metaphysician, for, was there not here an example of the à priori argument, to use the old jargon, wherein the cause is assumed to prove the effect, and the effect is then brought forward to prove the cause—a trick of wisdom we are yet in the nineteenth century playing every day?