have entertained no doubt.

[Illustration: Facsimile of the Intercepted Letter to Cranstoun
written by Mary Blandy
(_From the original MS. in the Public Record Office_.)]

Meanwhile Dr. Addington had applied to the mysterious powder the
tests prescribed by the scientific knowledge of the time, which, if
less delicate and reliable than the processes of Reinsch and
Marsh--a red-hot poker was the principal agent--yielded results then
deemed sufficiently conclusive. Judged by these experiments, Mrs.
Morgan's mystic philtre was composed of nothing more recondite than
white arsenic. When Dr. Addington called on Monday he found the
patient much worse, and sent for Dr. Lewis, of Oxford, as he
"apprehended Mr. Blandy to be in the utmost danger, and that this
affair might come before a Court of judicature." He asked the dying
man whether he himself knew if he had "taken poison often." Mr.
Blandy said he believed he had, and in reply to the further
question, 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.'" Dr. Lewis came, and confirmed Dr.
Addington's diagnosis; by their orders Mary was that evening
confined to her chamber, a guard was placed over her, and her keys,
papers, "and all instruments wherewith she could hurt either herself
or any other person" were taken from her. Dr. Addington graphically
describes the scene when the guilty woman realised that all was
lost. She protested that from the first she had been basely deceived
by Cranstoun, that she had never put powder in anything her father
swallowed, excepting the gruel drunk by him on the Monday and