hese occasions especially did she make use of
"medicinal brandy." She suffered from one of these periodical attacks
now, and, consequently, the medicinal glass was always within her reach.
On the small stand by her bed stood two tumblers, one containing the
medicinal "eau de vie," and the other was half full of vinegar.

She ordered Jane, on this fatal day, to pour a little laudanum into that
tumbler that contained the vinegar, to see if, by applying it to her
temples, it would not allay the terrible headache which she said had
tormented her. Instead of pouring the poison into the vinegar glass,
where would the Scotch Abigail empty the cruet but into the tumbler with
the brandy in it? Her mistress soon after quaffed off the liquor into
which the poisonous drug had been poured, and in an hour after she was a
lifeless corpse. This was not all; for, on the day of the funeral, young
Harry, Mr. Gulvert's son and heir, in order to show his devotion to his
beloved parent's remains, was all the morning busy in collecting flowers
with which to deck the room where she was laid in state, and,
attempting to reach a flower that grew out of the side of a deep,
deserted well, in the lower end of the garden, the little fellow fell in
and was drowned. "When the feet of them who buried" Mrs. Gulvert "were
at the door," they found out the corpse of Harry was at the bottom of
the well. It was a long time before any body could be induced to go into
that well, as well because it was very deep as on account of the
prevalent report in the neighborhood that Gulvert's father had killed a
negro and cast him into the well, with heavy weights attached to him.
After several unsuccessful attempts to raise the body, they at length
succeeded, by the aid and undaunted courage of a young man who was just
after riding up to the crowd, and who, on learning the cause of such a
gathering, generously volunteered to go into the well, notwithstanding
the hints he received from some of the bystanders that the "nigger" was
at the bottom. In a few minutes Paul O'Clery was at the bottom of the
"enchanted well," and, amid shouts of "Bravo!" and "Well done!" almost
instantly returned, with the lifeless body of little Harry in his arms.
But what's this that he finds tangled in the drowned child's hands? It
is surely the beads of his beloved mother, which she bequeathed as her
dying legacy to his youngest brother Eugene. How did it get into the
well? He trembled visibly