Thereupon,
without the ordinary law's delay, certain proceedings went on, in the
course of which Mysie herself was examined as the mother to afford what
the lawyers call a _semiplena probatio_, or half proof, to be
supplemented otherwise, and thereafter George Balgarnie stood before the
august fifteen. He denied stoutly all intercourse with Mysie, except an
occasional walk in the Hunter's Bog; and this he would have denied also,
but he knew that he had been seen, and that it would be sworn to by
others. And then came the last question, which Mr. Greerson, Mysie's
advocate, put in utter hopelessness. Nay, so futile did it seem to try
to catch a Scotchman by advising him to put his head in a noose on the
pretence of seeing how it fitted his neck, that he smiled even as the
words came out of his mouth--
"Did you ever promise to marry Mysie Craig?"
Was prudence, the chief of the four cardinal virtues, ever yet
consistent with vice? Balgarnie waxed clever--a dangerous trick in a
witness. He stroked his beard with a smile on his face, and answered--
"_Yes, once--when I was drunk_!"
Words which were immediately followed by the crack of a single word in
the dry mouth of one of the advocates--the word "NICKED.
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