and reported that his mother, Lady Cranstoun,
had employed workmen to fit up an
apartment for her at Lennel House. Soon
afterwards, Miss Blandy began to put her
father's powder into the water-gruel which
he took for supper. The father's bodily state
was becoming very wretched. Vomiting,
purging, and internal ulceration tortured
him. A nurse, for whom his daughter had a
great deal of affection, drank one morning
the gruel left by the master overnight, and
was seized, before she could finish it, with so
violent a sickness that the servants feared
she would die in a fit. She said, while she
was eating it, that the house smelt of physic,
and everything in it tasted of physic.
It is to be observed that, fancying one
of the servants was not looking well, Miss
Blandy had warned her of the unwholesomeness
of water-gruel, and had said something to
her fellow-servant with a like intention.

The powder was still being mixed with the
gruel. A large panful of gruel for three days'
consumption was prepared; and, on the third
day, one of the servants declared it to be
stale, and made some more. "Then," she
testified, "I brought out the pan (the evening
before I thought it had an odd taste), so
I was willing to taste it again, to see if I was
mistaken or not; I put it to my mouth and
drank some, and taking it from my mouth,
I observed some whiteness at the bottom. I
went immediately to the kitchen and told
Betty Binfield there was a white settlement,
and I did not remember I had ever seen oat-
meal so white before. Betty said, 'Let me
see it;' I carried it to her, she said 'What
oatmeal is this? I think it looks as white as
flour.' We both took the pan and turned it
about, and strictly observed it, and concluded
it could be nothing but oatmeal. I then took
it out of doors into the light and saw it
plainer; then I put my finger to it, and found
it gritty at the bottom of the pan; I then
recollected I had heard say, poison was white
and gritty, which made me afraid it was poison."
Murder was out. The pan was carefully put
by; taken, on the first opportunity, to a
friend of the family; and shown to the family
surgeon; who said he could not tell what it
was, because it was wet, but thought there
must be foul-play somewhere.

Now, Mr. Blandy was at this time dangerously
ill, and Miss Blandy had learnt from
the surgeon that he was in danger; whereupon
she urged, against her father's wish,
the sending for additional advice, and did send
secretly for Doctor Addington. Doctor
Addington, when he saw his patient, suspected
poison, and asked questions which alarmed
Miss Blandy. On a Saturday night, therefore,
when she had directed a letter to an
uncle, in the kitchen, and had made occasion
to go to the fire to dry the ink, she slipped
into the fire some papers and poked them
down into the coals. One servant immediately
threw coals on; and, as soon as the young
lady was gone, from under the damp coals
the two maids took a piece of paper that was
only singed and that contained white powder.
It was labelled in Mr. Cranstoun's hand-writing,
"Powder to clean the pebbles."

Then the servants were convinced that their
young mistress had been poisoning her father.
One of them gave information to her master
early the next morning. The powder was
placed, on his next visit, in the hands of Doctor
Addington; who called in a second physician,
and remained all day with his patient. During
that day he caused Miss Blandy to be searched
and guarded. He asked the father more
than once whether he really thought he had
taken poison. The old man replied that he
thought he had. His teeth had decayed faster
than was natural, and he had—especially after
his daughter had received a present of Scotch
pebbles from Mr. Cranstoun—been affected
with unaccountable pinchings and heats in
his tongue and throat, and with almost
intolerable burnings and pains. I asked him,
said the doctor, whom he suspected to be the
giver of the poison? The tears stood in his
eyes, yet he forced a smile, and said, "A
poor, love-sick girl. I forgive her. I always
thought there was mischief in those cursed
Scotch pebbles!"

The evidence to identify the powder in the
pan and paper as white arsenic, is curiously
illustrative of the difference between the
chemistry of to-day and that of a hundred
years ago. The surgeon believed the
white powder found in the pan to be poison,
"because it was gritty and had no smell."
The physician tried some in his house with a
red hot poker (to procure the odour of garlic
in the fumes), "upon which," he says, "I did
imagine it was of the arsenic kind." The
physician who received the paper of arsenic,
rescued from the fire, said, "I opened the
paper very carefully, and found in it a whitish
powder, like white arsenic in taste, but
slightly discoloured by a little burnt paper
mixed with it. I cannot swear this powder
was arsenic, or any other poison; because the
quantity was too small to make any experiment
with that could be depended on." With
the white powder from the pan, by trying
ten grains in one way, ten grains in another
way, and so using five tests on large quantities
—repeating the same tests with identical
results on arsenic bought as such, at a shop—he
obtained sufficient certainty as to the poison
used. Now, the chemist can identify the
smallest fraction of a grain.

Miss Blandy, imprisoned in her room and
parted from her father—who, she was told, was
dying—became violently distressed. Her
distress was imputed by the physicians to her
knowledge of the consequences to herself
with which she was then threatened. She
pleaded hard to see her father once, and did
see him. He received her tenderly; to her
plea for forgiveness he said, "I forgive thee,
my dear, and I hope God will forgive thee;