The cruel thoughts which so agonized the poor man's mind were these. From Lady L.'s symptoms, he suspected that her death had been occasioned by poison; every medicine she had taken had been mixed by himself, and here was the distracting thought! Some ingredients in his dispensary must then, he feared, have come to him wrong labelled; and, in mixing these, he must have formed some combination, hitherto unknown in chemistry, which had produced a deadly poison. To decide this point, he made numerous experiments. When every mixture proved wholesome, or at least innocent, and every label seemed rightly placed, he would say to himself. "But, they are dead!" Then, after pausing, and wearying his mind with vain conjectures, he would break forth again: "And the symptoms of both were those of poison, which the babe, doubtless, imbibed with its mother's milk. And I mixed every medicine myself; my own servant took them over; they lay on the table in Lady L.'s own bedroom, till I, with my own hands, administered them, taking care to see that my own labels were upon them! Yet," he added, shuddering, "the dregs in one of the bottles had neither exactly the colour, nor exactly the taste, that I should have anticipated." And whenever this conviction forced itself upon him, he turned cold, and the pulsations of his heart ceased for some seconds. We have seen the doctor completing the last of his experiments. He had reflected for a short time, in dreadful agitation, whether he were not in duty bound to declare his belief respecting the cause of Lady L.'s death to the family. He had decided that the information could only add to their affliction; while the confession, to himself, would be worse than ten thousand deaths! It was at this conclusion he had arrived, when we heard him exclaim, "Never! never! never!" He destroyed the whole contents of his dispensary, never more prescribed for any one, or mixed another medicine. All observed a general decay, a total failure both of strength and faculties, in their friend, the good doctor. He never smiled again, nor made another pun; and in a few weeks he died, carrying with him to the grave, the dreadful secret, or rather surmise, which was the occasion of his death. CHAPTER XIX. "He spoke of thee, but not by name." About six months after the death of Lady L., Mrs. Montgomery, in looking over papers of all descriptions, which had accumulated on her dressing-table, while she had been unable to attend to any thing, found one, folded and wafered, which had the appearance of a petition. On being opened, however, it proved to be a sort of letter, but vulgarly written, badly spelt, and without signature. It was also without date of time or place. It bore, notwithstanding, in its simplicity, strong marks of truth.