ence of the witness who had
preceded him.

The appearance of the next witness created a marked sensation in the
Court. This was no less a person than the nurse who had attended Mrs.
Macallan in her last illness--by name Christina Ormsay.

After the first formal answers, the nurse (examined by the Lord
Advocate) proceeded to say:

"I was first sent for to attend the deceased lady on the 7th of October.
She was then suffering from a severe cold, accompanied by a rheumatic
affection of the left knee-joint. Previous to this I understood that
her health had been fairly good. She was not a very difficult person to
nurse when you got used to her, and understood how to manage her. The
main difficulty was caused by her temper. She was not a sullen person;
she was headstrong and violent--easily excited to fly into a passion,
and quite reckless in her fits of anger as to what she said or did. At
such times I really hardly think she knew what she was about. My own
idea is that her temper was made still more irritable by unhappiness in
her married life. She was far from being a reserved person. Indeed,
she was disposed (as I thought) to be a little too communicative about
herself and her troubles with persons like me who were beneath her in
station. She did not scruple, for instance, to tell me (when we had
been long enough together to get used to each other) that she was very
unhappy, and fretted a good deal about her husband. One night, when she
was wakeful and restless, she said to me--"

The Dean of Faculty here interposed, speaking on the prisoner's behalf.
He appealed to the Judges to say whether such loose and unreliable
evidence as this was evidence which could be received by the Court.

The Lord Advocate (speaking on behalf of the Crown) claimed it as his
right to produce the evidence. It was of the utmost importance in this
case to show (on the testimony of an unprejudiced witness) on what terms
the husband and wife were living. The witness was a most respectable
woman. She had won, and deserved, the confidence of the unhappy lady
whom she attended on her death-bed.

After briefly consulting together, the Judges unanimously decided that
the evidence could not be admitted. What the witness had herself seen
and observed of the relations between the husband and wife was the only
evidence that they could receive.

The Lord Advocate thereupon continued his examination of the witness.
Christina Ormsay resumed her evidenc