How soon after drinking the gruel?—­Almost immediately.  He told me likewise that at the same time he had had cold sweats, hiccup, extreme restlessness and anxiety, but that then, viz., on Saturday night, August the 10th, having had a great many stools, and some bloody ones, he was pretty easy everywhere, except in his mouth, lips, nose, eyes, and fundament, and except some transient gripings in his bowels.  I asked him to what he imputed those uneasy sensations in his mouth, lips, nose, and eyes?  He said, to the fumes of something that he had taken in his gruel on Monday night, August the 5th, and Tuesday night, August the 6th.  On inspection I found his tongue swelled and his throat slightly inflamed and excoriated.  His lips, especially the upper one, were dry and rough, and had angry pimples on them.  The inside of his nostrils was in the same condition.  His eyes were a little bloodshot.  Besides these appearances, I observed that he had a low, trembling, intermitting pulse; a difficult, unequal respiration; a yellowish complexion; a difficulty in the utterance of his words; and an inability of swallowing even a teaspoonful of the thinnest liquor at a time.  As I suspected that these appearances and symptoms were the effect of poison, I asked Miss Blandy whether Mr. Blandy had lately given offence to either of his servants or clients, or any other person?  She answered, “That he was at peace with all the world, and that all the world was at peace with him.”  I then asked her whether he had ever been subject to complaints of this kind before?  She said that he had often been subject to the colic and heartburn, and that she supposed this was only a fit of that sort, and would soon go off, as usual.  I told Mr. Blandy that I asked these questions because I suspected that by some means or other he had taken poison.  He replied, “It might be so,” or in words to that effect; but Miss Blandy said, “It was impossible.”  On Sunday morning, August the 11th, he seemed much relieved; his pulse, breath, complexion, and power of swallowing were greatly mended.  He had had several stools in the night without any blood in them.  The complaints which he had made of his mouth, lips, nose, and eyes were lessened; but he said the pain in his fundament continued, and that he still felt some pinchings in his bowels.  On viewing his fundament, I found it almost surrounded with gleety excoriations and ulcers.  About eight o’clock that morning I took my leave of him; but before I quitted his room Miss Blandy desired I would visit him again the next day.  When I got downstairs one of the maids put a paper into my hands, which she said Miss Blandy had thrown into the kitchen fire.  Several holes were burnt in the paper, but not a letter of the superscription was effaced.  The superscription was “The powder to clean the pebbles with.”

What is the maid’s name that gave you that paper?—­I cannot recollect which of the maids it was 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.