He had attended on this piteous object at the suit of her unhappy brother; he had staunched the bleeding of her self-inflicted wounds, and had found it necessary to prescribe coercion, and to tie down her hands. An idea that her blood was poisoned had impressed her with the persuasion that to let it out was an act of duty, and the instant that she found her hands at liberty, she employed them in that office. The Doctor now stopped the bleeding, and provided against a repetition of it. When this was done, he attended to the anxious enquiries of John De Lancaster, with whose character and connections he was perfectly well acquainted. It was his opinion that the patient could not survive above two days: her pulse indicated approaching dissolution; nature was exhausted; the whole mass of her blood was broken; in fact it was absolutely poisoned by the inordinate infusion of pernicious stimulants, which had been insidiously administered in her diet and her drink for the most abominable purposes: of this he was convinced not only by her own evidence, but by symptomatic proofs, in which he could not be mistaken; in short he was certain, that when her death took place a jury of surgeons upon opening the body would confirm the fact, and this of course he recommended as a measure due to justice. With the same view he advised that her deposition should be taken without loss of time in a legal manner, which he believed her competent to give, especially now that the loss of blood had cleared her intellect, though at the same time it might conspire to hasten her dissolution. In conformity to this advice measures were immediately taken, and David Williams was dispatched to Kray Castle with the following letter from John to his grand-father. “Most dear and honoured sir, “I have been present at a scene of the most afflicting nature: Nancy Ap Rees, the daughter of blind Robin, is dying in consequence of practices too horrible to be described, that have been employed against her for purposes the most diabolical. When you call to mind the wretch, who has lately disappeared, it will spare me the pain of committing his detestable name to the same paper, that is graced with your’s, and signed with mine. “Alas, my beloved grand-father, how deeply do I regret that it should have been my lot so early in life, and for so long a portion of it, to have been in any degree implicated with a miscreant, who, after being convicted of the most disgraceful and unmanly conduct in various instances, has by gradations in cruelty proceeded to the extreme of all atrocity, and effected the violation of an innocent and virtuous girl by means, that amount, as I conceive, to actual murder.