e bag and placed
them on the table. One box he pushed towards Mr. Bedbury, asking him
to try them.

No one had seen Lamson take a capsule out of the box, but he was seen
to fill one with sugar and give it to the boy, saying, "Here, Percy,
you are a swell pill-taker." Within five minutes after that the doctor
excused himself for going so soon, saying if he did not he would lose
his train.

Not long after his departure--that is, between eight and nine--the boy
was taken ill and put into bed with all the violent symptoms which
are invariably produced by that most deadly of vegetable poisons,
aconitine, and he died at twenty minutes past eleven the same night.

Aconitine was found in the stomach; aconitine had been purchased by
the doctor before the boy's death, and being well and having been
well, the brother-in-law gave him the last thing he swallowed before
the dreadful symptoms of the poison betrayed its presence. At that
time no chemical test could be applied to aconitine, any more than it
could to strychnine in the time of Palmer. But its symptoms were, in
the one case as well as in the other, unmistakable, and such as no
other cause of illness would produce.

Two pills were found in the boy's play-box, one of which was said to
contain aconitine.

Such was the simple case which occupied six days to try. The jury were
not long in coming to a conclusion, and returned into court with a
verdict of "Guilty."

My awful duty was soon concluded. I told the prisoner the law
compelled me to pass upon him the sentence of death; but gave him,
both by voice and manner, to understand that in this world there could
be no hope for such a criminal. I said, as I thought it right to say,
that it was no part of my duty to admonish him as to how he was to
meet the dread doom that awaited him, but nevertheless I entreated
him to seek for pardon of his great sin from the Almighty. It was my
opinion, and I believe that of the counsel for the defence, that,
although so much stress was laid upon the _capsule_ and the
administration of the poison by that means, it was not so
administered, but that the capsule was an artifice, designed to
hoodwink the doctors and Treasury solicitors.

To have poisoned the boy in such a manner would have been a clumsy
device for so keen and artful a criminal as Lamson; and I knew it
was conveyed in another manner. It should be stated that in Lamson's
pocket-book were found memoranda as to the symptoms a