love"; and again, on the conclusion of Bathurst's reply, "It is said
I gave it my father to make him fond of me: there was no occasion
for that--but to make him fond of Cranstoun." In her _Narrative_ she
repeats this statement; but in her _Own Account_, written and
revised by herself, she says, "I gave it to my poor father innocent
of the effects it afterwards produced, God knows; _not so stupid as
to believe it would have that desired, to make him kind to us_; but
in obedience to Mr. Cranstoun, who ever seemed superstitious to the
last degree." Here we have an entirely fresh (if no less false)
reason assigned for the exhibition of the wise woman's drug; only,
of course, another lie, but one which, disposes of her previous
defence. Of the true qualities of the powder she had ample proof;
she warned the maid that the gruel "might do for her," she saw its
virulent effects upon Gunnell and Emmet, as well as on her father
from its first administration, while her concealment of its use from
the physician, and her destruction of the remanent portion, are
equally incompatible with belief either in its innocence or her own.
Finally, her burning of Cranstoun's letters, which, if her story was
true, were her only means of confirming it, her attempts to bribe
the servants, and her statements to Fisher and the Lanes at the
Angel, afford, in Mr. Baron Legge's phrase, "a violent presumption"
of her guilt.

Cranstoun, even at the time, did not lack apologists, who held that
Miss Blandy, herself the solo criminal, cunningly sought to involve
her guileless lover in order to lessen her own guilt. This view has
been endorsed by later authorities. Anderson, in his _Scottish
Nation_, remarks, "There does not appear to have been any grounds
for supposing that the captain was in any way accessory to the
murder"; and Mr. T.F. Henderson, in his article on Cranstoun in the