With these words he left the room, in some hope that possibly they might induce George still to stay proceedings. But the cupidity of George’s own breast, the views and arguments of his counsel, and the animosity of his mother, all co-operated to weaken their effect; so that, in the course of as short a time as the forms of the judicature permitted, a jury was empannelled before the Sheriff, according to the tenor of the special brief of Chancery which had been procured for the purpose, and evidence as to the state of poor Watty’s understanding and capacity regularly examined;—some account of which we shall proceed to lay before our readers, premising that Mr. Threeper opened the business in a speech replete with eloquence and ingenuity, and all that metaphysical refinement for which the Scottish bar was then, as at present, so justly celebrated. Nothing, indeed, could be more subtile, or less applicable to the coarse and daily tear and wear of human concerns, than his definition of what constituted ‘the minimum of understanding, or of reason, or of mental faculty in general, which the law, in its wisdom, required to be enjoyed by every individual claiming to exercise the functions that belong to man, as a subject, a citizen, a husband, a father, a master, a servant,—in one word, to enable him to execute those different essential duties, which every gentleman of the jury so well knew, and so laudably, so respectably, and so meritoriously performed.’—But we regret that our limits do not allow us to enter upon the subject; and the more so, as it could not fail to prove highly interesting to our fair readers, in whose opinion the eloquence of the Parliament House of Edinburgh, no doubt, possesses many charming touches of sentiment, and amiable pathetic graces.
CHAPTER LV
The first witness examined was Jenny Purdie, servant to Mr. George Walkinshaw. She had previously been several years in the service of his father, and is the same who, as our readers will perhaps recollect, contrived so femininely to seduce half-a-crown from the pocket of the old man, when she brought him the news of the birth of his son’s twin daughters.
‘What is your opinion of Mr. Walter Walkinshaw?’ inquired Mr. Threeper.
‘’Deed, sir,’ said Jenny, ‘I hae but a sma’ opinion o’ him—he’s a daft man, and has been sae a’ his days.’
‘But what do you mean by a daft man?’
‘I thought every body kent what a daft man is,’ replied Jenny; ‘he’s just silly, and tavert, and heedless, and o’ an inclination to swattle in the dirt like a grumphie.’
‘Well, but do you mean to say,’ interrupted the advocate, ‘that, to your knowledge, he has been daft all his days?’
‘I never kent him ony better.’