those cursed Scotch pebbles."

Soon afterwards he got up and came to breakfast in his parlour,
where his daughter and Mr. Littleton, his clerk, then were. A dish
of tea, in the usual manner, was ready poured out for him. He just
tasted it and said, "This tea has a bad taste," looked at the cup,
then looked hard at his daughter. She was, for the first time,
shocked, burst into tears, and ran out of the room. The poor father,
more shocked than the daughter, poured the tea into the cat's basin,
and went to the window to recover himself. She soon came again into
the room. Mr. Littleton said, "Madam, I fear your father is very
ill, for he has flung away his tea." Upon this news she trembled,
and the tears again stood in her eyes. She again withdraws. Soon
afterwards the father came into the kitchen, and, addressing himself
to her, said, "Molly, I had like to have been poisoned twenty years
ago, and now I find I shall die by poison at last." This was warning
sufficient. She immediately went upstairs, brought down Mr.
Cranstoun's letters, together with the remainder of the poison, and
threw them (as she thought unobserved) into the fire. Thinking she
had now cleared herself from the suspicious appearances of poison,
her spirits mend, "she thanked God that she was much better, and
said her mind was more at ease than it had been." Alas! how often
does that which we fondly imagine will save us become our
destruction? So it was in the present instance. For providentially,
though the letters were destroyed, the paper with the poison in it
was not burnt. One of the maids having immediately flung some fresh
coals upon the fire, Miss Blandy went well satisfied out of the
room. Upon her going out, Susan Gunnell said to her fellow-servants,
"I saw Miss Blandy throw some papers in the fire, let us see whether
we can discover what they were." They removed the coals, and found a
paper with white powder in it, wrote upon, in Mr. Cranstoun's hands,
"Powder to clean the pebbles."[3] This powder they preserved, and
the doctor will tell you that it was white arsenic, the same which
had been found in the pan of gruel.

Having now (as she imagined) concealed her own being concerned, you
will find her the next day endeavouring to prevent her lover from
being discovered. Mr. Blandy of Kingston having come the night
before to see her father, on Sunday morning she sent Mr. Littleton
with him to church; while they were there she sat down and wrote