that gave it me. I opened the paper very
carefully, and found in it a whiteish 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.

What do you really suspect it to be?--I really suspect it to be white
arsenic.

Please to proceed, sir.--As soon as the maid had left me, Mr. Norton,
the apothecary, produced a powder that, he said, had been found at the
bottom of that mess of gruel, which, as was supposed, had poisoned Mr.
Blandy. He gave me some of this powder, and I examined it at my
leisure, and believed it to be white arsenic. On Monday morning,
August the 12th, I found Mr. Blandy much worse than I had left him the
day before. His complexion was very bad, his pulse intermitted, and he
breathed and swallowed with great difficulty. He complained more of
his fundament than he had done before. His bowels were still in pain.
I now desired that another physician might be called in, as I
apprehended Mr. Blandy to be in the utmost danger, and that this
affair might come before a Court of judicature. Dr. Lewis was then
sent for from Oxford. I stayed with Mr. Blandy all this day. I asked
him more than once whether he really thought he had taken poison? He
answered each time that he believed he had. I asked him whether he
thought he had taken poison often? He answered in the affirmative. His
reasons for thinking so were because some of his teeth had decayed
much faster than was natural, and because he had frequently for some
months past, especially after his daughter had received a present of
Scotch pebbles from Mr. Cranstoun, been affected with very violent and
unaccountable prickings and heats in his tongue and throat, and with
almost intolerable burnings and pains in his stomach and bowels, which
used to go off in vomitings and purgings. I asked him 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 about eight o'clock in the evening. Before he
came Mr. Blandy's complexion, pulse, breath, and faculty of swallowing
were much better again; but he complained more of pain in his
fundament. This evening Miss Blandy was confined to her chamber, a
guard w