Half a century later our ancestors were in a state of intense excitement about another tragedy of a darker kind. Mary Blandy, the only daughter of a gentleman at Henley, made acquaintance with a Captain Cranstoun, who was recruiting in the town. The father objected to a marriage from a suspicion, apparently well founded, that Cranstoun was already married in Scotland. Thereupon Mary Blandy administered to her father certain powders sent to her by Cranstoun. According to her own account, she intended them as a kind of charm to act upon her father's affections. As they were, in fact, composed of arsenic, they soon put an end to her father altogether, and it is too clear that she really knew what she was doing. It was sworn that she used brutal and unfeeling language about the poor old man's sufferings, for the poison was given at intervals during some months. But the pathetic touch which moved the sympathies of contemporaries was the behaviour of the father. In the last day or two of his life, he was told that his daughter had been the cause of his fatal illness. His comment was: 'Poor love-sick girl! What will not a woman do for the man she loves!' When she came to his room his only thought was apparently to comfort her. His most reproachful phrase was: 'Thee should have considered better than to have attempted anything against thy father.' The daughter went down on her knees and begged him not to curse her. 'I curse thee!' he exclaimed. 'My dear, how couldst thou think I should curse thee? No, I bless thee, and hope God will bless thee and amend thy life.' And then he added, 'Do, my dear, go out of the room and say no more, lest thou shouldst say anything to thy prejudice; go to thy uncle Stevens, take him for thy friend; poor man, I am sorry for him.' The tragedy behind these homely words is almost too pathetic and painful for dramatic purposes; and it is not strange that our ancestors were affected. The sympathy, however, took the queer illogical twist which perhaps, who can tell? it might do at the present day. Miss Blandy became a sort of _quasi_ saint, the tenderness due to the murdered man extended itself to his murderer, and her penitence profoundly edified all observers. Crowds of people flocked to see her in chapel, and she accepted the homage gracefully. She was extremely shocked, we are told, by one insinuation made by uncharitable persons; namely, that her intimacy with Cranstoun, who was supposed to be a freethinker, might justify doubts upon her orthodoxy. She declared that he had always talked to her 'perfectly in the style of a Christian,' and she had read the works of some of our most celebrated divines. In spite of her moving conduct, however, the 'prejudices she had to struggle with had taken too deep root in some men's minds' to allow of her getting a pardon. And so, 5,000 people saw poor Miss Blandy mount the ladder in 'a black bombazine, short sack and petticoat,' on an April morning at Oxford, and many, 'particularly several gentlemen of the University,' were observed to shed tears. She left a declaration of innocence which, in spite of its solemnity, must have been a lie; and which contained an allusion from which it appears that Miss Blandy, like other prisoners, was suspected of previous crimes.