What do you think she replied, when thus hunted into a corner,
pushed against a wall, driven to the very confines of her personal
and national liberty? She subjected the potato to a second careful
scrutiny, and answered, "I wudna say it's no'!"

Now there is no inherited physical terror in this. It is the
concentrated essence of intelligent reserve, caution, and obstinacy;
it is a conscious intellectual hedging; it is a dogged and
determined attempt to build up barriers of defence between the
questioner and the questionee: it must be, therefore, the offspring
of the catechism and the heresy trial.

Once again, after establishing an equally obvious fact, I succeeded
in wringing from her the reluctant admission, "It depends," but she
was so shattered by the bulk and force of this outgo, so fearful
that in some way she had imperilled her life or reputation, so
anxious concerning the effect that her unwilling testimony might
have upon unborn generations, that she was of no real service the
rest of the day.

I wish that the Lord Advocate, or some modern counterpart of
Braxfield, the hanging judge, would summon Susanna Crum as a witness
in an important case. He would need his longest plummet to sound
the depths of her consciousness.

I have had no legal experience, but I can imagine the scene.

"Is the prisoner your father, Susanna Crum?"

"I cudna say, my lord."