f her guilt.

Cranstoun, even at the time, did not lack apologists, who held that
Miss Blandy, herself the solo criminal, cunningly sought to involve
her guileless lover in order to lessen her own guilt. This view has
been endorsed by later authorities. Anderson, in his _Scottish
Nation_, remarks, "There does not appear to have been any grounds
for supposing that the captain was in any way accessory to the
murder"; and Mr. T.F. Henderson, in his article on Cranstoun in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_, observes, "Apart from her [Mary
Blandy's] statement there was nothing to connect him with the
murder." These writers seem to have overlooked the following
important facts:--The letter written by Cranstoun to Mary, read by
Bathurst in his opening speech, the terms of which plainly prove the
writer's complicity; and the packet rescued from the fire, bearing
in his autograph the words, "The powder to clean the pebbles with,"
which, when we remember the nature of its contents, leaves small
doubt of the sender's guilt. "A supposition," says Mr. Bleackley,
"that does not explain [these] two damning circumstances must be
baseless." The nocturnal manifestations experienced by Cranstoun,
and interpreted by his friend Mrs. Morgan as presaging Mr. Blandy's
death, must also be explained. Further, it would be interesting to
know how the defenders of Cranstoun account for the warning given
him by Mary in the intercepted letter--"Lest any accident should
happen to your letters, _take care what you write_." That this was
part of a subtle scheme to inculpate her lover will, in the
circumstances, hardly be maintained. As Mr. Andrew Lang once
remarked of a hypothesis equally untenable, "That cock won't fight."
Would Cranstoun have fled as he did from justice, and gone into
voluntary exile for life, when, if innocent, he had only to produce
Mary's letters to him in proof of the blameless character of their
correspondence? and why, when on his death those letters passed into
Lord Cranstoun's custody, did not that nobleman publish them in
vindication of his brother's honour, as he was directly challenged
to do by a pamphleteer of the day? The Crown authorities, at any
rate, as we have seen, did not share the opinion expressed by the
writers above cited; and from what was said by Mr. Justice Buller,
in the case of _George Barrington_ (Mich. 30 Geo. III., reported
Term Rep. 499), it appears that Cranstoun, for his concern in the
murder o