ce referred.

It may, in closing, be worth while to remind the student of such
matters that the year with which we have had so much concern was in
other respects an important one in the annals of crime. On 14th May,
1752, the "Red Fox," Glenure, fell by an assassin's bullet in the
wood of Lettermore, which fact resulted in the hanging of a
guiltless gentleman and, in after years, more happily inspired an
immortal tale; while on 1st January, 1753, occurred the
disappearance of Elizabeth Canning, that bewildering damsel whose
mission it was to baffle her contemporaries and to set at nought the
skill of subsequent inquirers.

Well, we have learned all that history and tradition has to tell us
about Mary Blandy; but what do we really know of that sombre soul
that sinned and suffered and passed to its appointed place so long
ago? A few "facts," some "circumstances"--which, if we may believe
the dictum of Mr. Baron Legge, cannot lie; and yet she remains for
us dark and inscrutable as in her portrait, where she sits calmly in
her cell, preparing her false _Account_ for the misleading of future
generations. Like her French "parallel," Marie-Madeleine de
Brinvilliers, like that other Madeleine of Scottish fame, she leaves
us but a catalogue of ambiguous acts; her secret is still her own.
If only she had been the creature of some great novelist's fancy,
how intimately should we then have known all that is hidden from us
now; imagine her made visible for us through the exquisite medium of
Mr. Henry James's incomparable art--the subtle individual threads
all cunningly combined, the pattern wondrously wrought, the colours
delicately and exactly shaded, until, in the rich texture of the
finished tapestry, the figure of the woman as she lived stood
perfectly revealed.

Leading Dates In the Blandy Case.

1744.

22 May--Marriage of Cranstoun and Anne Murray.

1745.

19 February--Birth of their daughter.

1746.

August--Cranstoun meets Mary Blandy at Lord Mark Kerr's.

October--Mrs. Cranstoun takes proceedings in Commissary Court.

1747.

August--Second meeting of Cranstoun and Mary. Cranstoun visits the
Blandys and stays six months.

1748.

January--Cranstoun returns to London.

1 March--Cranstoun's marriage upheld by the Commissary Court.

May--Mrs. Blandy's illness at Turville Court. Cranstoun pays a
second six-months' visit to the Blandys.

December--Cranstoun's regiment