the post-mortem examination followed. He positively swore that
the appearance of the internal organs proved Doctor Jerome and Mr. Gale
to be right in declaring that their patient had died poisoned. Lastly,
to complete this overwhelming testimony, two analytical chemists
actually produced in Court the arsenic which they had found in the body,
in a quantity admittedly sufficient to have killed two persons instead
of one. In the face of such evidence as this, cross-examination was a
mere form. The first Question raised by the Trial--Did the Woman Die
Poisoned?--was answered in the affirmative, and answered beyond the
possibility of doubt.

The next witnesses called were witnesses concerned with the question
that now followed--the obscure and terrible question, Who Poisoned Her?

CHAPTER XVII. SECOND QUESTION--WHO POISONED HER?

THE evidence of the doctors and the chemists closed the proceedings on
the first day of the Trial.

On the second day the evidence to be produced by the prosecution was
anticipated with a general feeling of curiosity and interest. The Court
was now to hear what had been seen and done by the persons officially
appointed to verify such cases of suspected crime as the case which had
occurred at Gleninch. The Procurator-Fiscal--being the person officially
appointed to direct the preliminary investigations of the law--was the
first witness called on the second day of the Trial.

Examined by the Lord Advocate, the Fiscal gave his evidence, as follows:

"On the twenty-sixth of October I received a communication from Doctor
Jerome, of Edinburgh, and from Mr. Alexander Gale, medical practitioner,
residing in the village or hamlet of Dingdovie, near Edinburgh. The
communication related to the death, under circumstances of suspicion, of
Mrs. Eustace Macallan, at her husband's house, hard by Dingdovie, called
Gleninch. There were also forwarded to me, inclosed in the document
just mentioned, two reports. One described the results of a postmortem
examination of the deceased lady, and the other stated the discoveries
made after a chemical analysis of certain of the interior organs of her
body. The result in both instances proved to demonstration that Mrs.
Eustace Macallan had died of poisoning by arsenic.

"Under these circumstances, I set in motion a search and inquiry in
the house at Gleninch and elsewhere, simply for the purpose of throwing
light on the circumstances which had attended the lady's dea