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reigned butterfly king of that glittering sham world.

In due season he went to Bath to look for an heiress. In June, 1777, fortune sent him one. The inn at which he stayed was so full that there was not another bed. Two Warwickshire ladies, the Dowager Lady Boughton and her fair daughter, arrived, and were in despair. How could they sleep on chairs in a coffee-room? At that moment the door opened, and in glided Donnellan, young, handsome, soft of speech. He insisted on surrendering his bedroom to the two ladies. They accepted the offer with gratitude, and asked their benefactor to breakfast the next morning. He came, he saw, he conquered. Who could resist such a man? Shortly after, to the rage of the family, he eloped with Miss Boughton, and married her triumphantly. As the handsome adventurer, however, generously agreed to abandon all share in his wife's fortune, the family in time grew reconciled. The handsome and agreeable captain came from Bath with his wife to reside at Lawford Hall, in June, 1778. In the same year, Lady Boughton went to fetch her son, Sir Theodosius, from Eton, where he had wallowed deeply in vice, to live with her quietly down in the Warwickshire house. He attained his twentieth year, August the 3rd, 1780. Wilful and untoward, the sickly young squire soon began to quarrel with his new brother-in-law, whose checks, reproofs, and cautions he took, as might have been expected, in very bad part. From several quarrels and embryo duels in Bath, in 1778, and also at the Assembly Rooms at the Bear Inn, Rugby, in September, 1779, the captain extricated him. Donnellan also saved the lad's life (or at least he claimed to have done so) on one occasion when his foot slipped, as he climbed to the top of Newbold Church to try and turn the weathercock. The captain had also (as he afterwards asserted) entreated the rash stripling never to bathe in the Lawford Hall pond without bundles of bulrushes or bladders. In fact, he had been so considerate and watchful, that Sir Theodosius hated him, and thwarted and snubbed him on every possible occasion. Several times before August, 1780, the captain had spoken forebodingly of the young squire's health. One day he said in a mysterious way to Lady Boughton:

"Don't talk about leaving Lawford Hall; something or other may happen. The. is in a very bad state of health. You cannot tell what may arise before that time."

Donnellan had also warned Lady Boughton not to drink out of the same cup

with her son (as he was being salivated), nor to touch the bread he cut, as there might be arsenic on his fingers, since he was fond of poisoning fish to kill the rats. Always considerate, always decorous, the captain became the self-elected guardian angel of Lawford Hall. On Saturday, the 26th of August, this amiable man had a conversation with the Reverend Mr. Newsom, rector of Newbold, who had just returned from a tour. He spoke of the alarming state of Sir The.'s health, and of the way he quacked himself with mercury, from prescriptions in some medical book his mother had foolishly given him. The illness seemed coming to a crisis, and "his intellects at intervals were so much affected, that nobody knew what it was to live with him."

"If that is the case," said the sympathising rector, gravely, "I should say his life is not worth two years' purchase.'

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"Not one," was the curt reply of the guardian angel.

The Tuesday following Lady Boughton's servant boy, Samuel Frost, was sent over to Rugby for some medicine, and Mr. Powell, the surgeon, delivered the bottle, neatly wrapped up and sealed in the usual trim medical manner, to the servant with his own hand. It was a harmless, commonplace, two-ounce draught of rhubarb, jalap, spirits of lavender, nutmeg water, and syrup, warm, soothing, smelling of spice, if anything at all, slightly purgative, and chiefly useful as a vehicle for charging eighteen - pence. The careless lad took the bottle, touched his hat, and rode back gaily to Lawford Hall. About half-past five the lad delivered the bottle to Sir Theodosius, whom he met on the staircase, and about six o'clock the young baronet went out fishing with Samuel Frost, and Lady Boughton and Mrs. Donnellan took an hour's walk in the garden. autumn, and there was fruit to gather, and past the great laurel shrubberies, glittering in the sunset, the two ladies walked, chatting about the grape bunches on this vine, and the freckled greengages yellowing upon that tree. About seven o'clock the gallant captain, debonair as usual, came out of the front door, rubbing his little white hands, and joined his wife and mother-in-law. He said:

It was

"I have been down to see them fishing, and tried to persuade Sir The. to come in, lest he should take cold, but I couldn't." The wilful boy was always imprudent; there were the usual regrets, as it was getting late, and the dew was heavy, but nothing

else was said. The captain drank a cup of milk, and retired early. A little after nine Sir The. came in, very well, but tired; ate a little supper, and went to bed. As his mother was going up-stairs her son called her to his room, and asked permission to send her boy, Sam Frost, out the next morning with the net, for some fish, as Mr. Fonnercau, a Northamptonshire friend of his, was expected in the evening. That night the Boughton family (all but one) slept peacefully.

The next morning about six Sam Frost knocked at his young master's door, and, going in, asked him for some straps to buckle on the fishing-net; the lad, leaping out of bed, brisk and lively, went into the next room to get them. About seven Lady Boughton, as her son had requested her the night before, came in, as she went down-stairs, to give him his rhubarb draught. He appeared well, very well, and, on her inquiring where the bottle was, told her that it stood there upon the shelf. He then asked for a bit of cheese to take the taste out of his mouth, and desired her to read the label, to make sure it was the right bottle. She read: "The purging draught for Sir Theodosius Boughton.' She then poured out the turbid, reddish-brown, aromatic liquid, forgetting to first shake it up. The lad at once called out, with all the imperiousness of an invalid, and all the selfish despotism of a spoiled child, "Pour it back again, and shake the bottle." With the slavish affection of a mother, Lady Boughton did so, and in doing so spilt a part upon the table. As Sir The. ruefully drank the thick brown potion, he stopped to say, "It smells and tastes very nauseous."

"I think it smells very strong, like bitter almonds," was Lady Boughton's reply.

He then bit some cheese, rinsed his mouth, and laid down. A minute and a half after he had taken the medicine the poor boy began to struggle, and there was a gurgling in his throat, as if he were unable to keep the nauseous medicine down. These symptoms lasted about ten minutes. Then he grew more composed, and seemed inclined to sleep. Quietly his mother glided from the room. Returning to steal a look at him five minutes afterwards, to her infinite horror she found him with his eyes fixed, his teeth clenched in mortal agony, and froth oozing fast from each corner of his mouth. He was evidently dying. Rushing down-stairs, she ran to the stable where William Frost, the coachman, was waiting

with the horses ready for her morning ride with the captain to the Wells.

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William, William !" she called. "My lady!" was the answer.

"You must go to Mr. Powell, and fetch him as fast as possible. My son is dangerously ill!"

"There is only your horse in the stable, my lady," said William.

"That will not go fast enough. You must get the mare.'

But Captain Donnellan had the mare, and had ridden off to the Wells.

"Go and meet him and take the mare!" was the frantic order.

But just then the captain appeared inside the gate, and the coachman told him he had to take the mare and ride off to Rugby for Mr. Powell. His answer the coachman did not in his excitement mark, but leaped on the mare and dashed off. In less than five minutes from the seizure, the captain was up in Sir The.'s room, where two of the female servants and the mother were standing, petrified with horror, by the dying boy, whose lips a maid was wiping. Donnellan asked coolly what she wanted; at that moment the boy was dying fast.

"I wanted," said Lady Boughton, "to tell you what a terrible thing has happened; what an unaccountable thing in a doctor to send such a medicine, for if a dog had taken it it would have killed him. I don't think my son will live."

The captain asked in what way Sir The. had been taken. Lady Boughton told him. His first question naturally was:

The

"Where is the physic bottle?" She pointed to the two bottles. fatal one recently emptied, and the one emptied on the Saturday. Donnellan took up the last bottle, and being told that was it, instantly poured into it some water out of the water-bottle, shook it carefully, did not taste it, but emptied the contents into a wash-hand basin full of dirty water.

Lady Boughton, struck by this odd proceeding, cried out:

"You ought not to do that. What are you at? You should not meddle with the bottles."

In spite of this the captain at once snatched up the other bottle-the draught bottle of Saturday-poured in water, shook it, then put his finger to taste the liquid, and said it was nauseous.

She again said, with some slight distrust and alarm, "What are you about? You ought not to meddle with the bottles."

He replied, "I did it to taste it."
But he never proposed to taste the con-

tents of the fatal bottle, and that fact struck root in the mother's mind. Another thing, that escaped her observation at the time, soon after still more excited her suspicions. The captain desired Sarah Blundell, one of the housemaids, to remove the basin, the dirty things, and the medicine bottles. Now all this was very decorous and gentleman-like, but was perhaps more befitting an orderly business-like undertaker than a brother-in-law of the poor boy who lay yet scarce cold in the very room where he (the captain) then stood. And yet so anxious was the captain for the neatness of the room that the coroner's jury would soon have to visit, that he actually snatched the medicine bottles together and thrust them himself into the housemaid's shaking hand. But Lady Boughton's vigilance was aroused. She turned, angrily took the bottles out of the girl's hand, and bade her set them down, and let them alone. Donnellan, still anxious for the proprieties, then desired that the place might be cleaned, and the clothes thrown into the inner room. This diverted Lady Boughton's attention, and as she unlocked the door of the inner room, and while her back was turned for the moment, as she was afterwards told, the captain again thrust the bottles into Sarah Blundell's hand, and bade her take them down-stairs, chiding her for not doing what he had at first told her. As the linen was being thrown into the inner room, the captain said to the maid:

"Here, take his stockings. They have been wet, he has caught cold be sure, and that might occasion his death.”

Lady Boughton said nothing, but presently felt and examined the stockings. They were neither wet, nor had they been wet. That, too, was singular.

The captain presently went into the garden, and searching out Francis Amos, the gardener, said to him:

"Gardener, you must go and take a couple of pigeons directly" (to kill and put to the feet of the dying boy).

The gardener replied there were none fit

to eat.

Donnellan said: "It will make no odds if they are not, for they are for Sir The.; we must have them ready against the doctor comes. Poor fellow (Sir The.), he lies in a sad agony now with his disease -it will be the death of him."

The remedy was, however, a little too late. As the gardener entered the house with the pigeons, Lady Boughton and Mrs. Donnellan, wringing their hands, met him at the door, and cried:

"It is too late now-he is dead!" He was then sent for two women from the village to lay out the corpse.

The captain remained cool and ever attentive to the proprieties. That class of man is not ruffled by mere vulgar events like death. An hour or two after that scene of agony up-stairs, he was seated with the two weeping women in the parlour. All at once he broke out angrily and strangely to his wife:

"Your mother," he said, "has been pleased to take notice of my washing the bottle out, and I don't know what I should have done if I had not thought of saying I put the water into it to taste it with my finger."

This revived in Lady Boughton the horrible thought of the morning. She said nothing, but turned away from him to the window. He repeated what he had said to his astonished wife. Lady Boughton still stood there, dark against the light, and made no reply. Then he desired his wife to ring the bell and call up a servant. A servant came, and he ordered Will, the coachman, to be sent for. Will came. Donnellan then said:

"Will, don't you remember that I set out of those iron gates this morning about seven o'clock? You remember that, don't you ?"

The coachman said, "Yes, sir."

"And that was the first time of my going out. I have never been on the other side of the house this morning. You remember that I set out there at seven o'clock this morning, and asked for a horse to go to the Wells ?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then you are my evidence ?" 'Yes, sir."

That same evening the captain went into the garden to Amos, who used to gather roses and lavender for him to distil, and said to him in the genial way of a probable legatee, and with all the exultation of a future baronet working in him :

"Now, gardener, you shall live at your ease, and work at your ease; it shall not be as it was in Sir The.'s day. I wanted before to be master, but I have got master now, and shall be master."

A few days after, the captain brought Amos a still to clean. It was full of lime, and the lime was wet. The lime-water, he said, had been used to kill fleas, not a common remedy for such intruders; but then the captain was a chemist, and a clever man, and knew what was what better than your Warwickshire gardeners.

And now it was that a rumour began to flit about the house as a bat flutters half visible in the dark. It passed from the harness-room to the still-room, from the servants' hall to the housekeeper's room, from the gardener's shed to the butler's pantry. These dim fears and suspicions, condensed into words, amounted to this, that Sir The. had in some way or other, either by carelessness or intention, been poisoned. Sarah Blundell described how anxious Captain Donnellan had been to remove the medicine bottles from the dead lad's room. Catherine Amos, the cook, then remembered and told the openmouthed, pale servants gathered round the fire, how a quarter of an hour after Sir The. was seized, just as she had left the dying lad, the captain had met her in the passage and said, "Sir Theodosius was out very late last night a-fishing, and it was very silly of him, such physic as he had been taking." Then Sarah Blundell would mention how her lady had observed that Sir The.'s stockings were not wet, though the captain, who had been with him, had regretted his being out so late in the wet grass. "The captain with him?" said Sam Frost, Lady Boughton's boy, at one of these parliaments in the kitchen; "not he. I and Sir The. were alone the whole time.' That was odd, too, and some shook their heads. Moreover, said Sam, "Sir The. was never off his horse the whole time, so how could his feet get wet, mark you." It would not be forgotten either by the servants how the captain had instantly rinsed the bottles, and the gardener would be sure to tell how Mr. Donnellan came somewhat late for the two pigeons, and in the evening how he had exulted at becoming lord of Lawford Hall.

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An hour after Sir The.'s death, Mr. Powell, the Rugby surgeon, arrived, and went gravely and with long, solemn steps up-stairs to the room where the corpse lay. He took up the cold waxen hand, and putting it instantly down, said, "He is dead." He then turned to the captain, who with decorous gravity stood watchful at his elbow, and asked how the boy had died. Donnellan replied, "In convulsions;" he had been out the night before and caught cold. Two bottles were shown Mr. Powell, but no allusion was made to them. Lady Boughton merely told him that soon after the lad took the medicine sent, he had been seized with convulsions.

The same morning that Sir The. died, the captain, ever decorous and businesslike, wrote a very calm communication of

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Leamington, September 4th, 1780. DEAR SIR,-Since I wrote to you last, I have been applied to, as the guardian of the late Sir Theodosius Boughton, to inquire into the cause of his sudden death; report says that he was better the morning of his death, and before he took the physic, than he had been for many weeks, and that he was taken ill in less than half an hour, and died two hours after he had swallowed the physic; and it will be a great satisfaction to Mr. Powell to have his body opened, and I am sure it must be to you, Lady Boughton, and Mrs. Donnellan, when I assure you that it is reported all over the county that he was killed either by medicine or poison. The county will never be convinced to the contrary unless the body is opened, and I beg of you to lay this matter before Lady Boughton in as tender a manner as possible, and to point out to her the real necessity of complying with my request, and to say that it is expected by the county, &c.

The captain at once wrote in the most cordial manner to Sir William, saying: "We most cheerfully wish to have the body opened for the general satisfaction,

and the sooner it is done the better. Come yourself." He also wrote off to Doctor Rattray and Mr. Wilmer, of Coventry, to come that very evening if possible.

It was dark when the two doctors arrived at Lawford Hall on their dismal errand. Captain Donnellan, in his grandest manner, received them in the hall with a candle in his hand; he lighted them into the parlour, and they had refreshment while the coffin was being unsoldered. As they came into the hall, Mr. Powell stood at a table reading a letter which had been lying there, and which he had opened by mistake. Captain Donnellan turned the letter up and read the direction. It was a second letter from Sir William Wheeler, suggesting that no one but the faculty should be present at the examination, "which was not to satisfy his curiosity, but to prevent the world from blaming any of us that had anything to do with poor Sir Theodosius." The letter was very polite, the captain said, and the first letter he had received was much the same. Here he was hardly candid, as the first letter had expressed strong suspicion of poison. He fumbled in his deep-flapped waistcoatpocket for the first letter, but only pulled out a cover, which Mr. Powell, with only one quick glance, thought he saw was in Sir William's handwriting. At the bottom of the stairs the captain said, " Gentlemen, you will excuse me;" so the three doctors and an assistant went up alone to the room where the corpse lay. It was too late to examine the body, and they came down and told Donnellan so, asking especially for what purpose it was to be opened. Here, again, the polished man of the world was not frank, for he replied, merely for the satisfaction of the family. That being the only motive, they declined to perform an examination now useless, and recommended the immediate burial. The four gentlemen then stayed supper, and refusing to remain all night, though the captain, always polite, pressed it strongly, they left, Donnellan giving them six guineas apiece, and the assistant two. All was most pleasantly arranged.

The next morning the funeral was again organised; and once more the tenants in black gathered round the churchyard. Early that day Captain Donnellan wrote a brief and ambiguous letter to Sir William, saying that the doctors had attended to his wish, and satisfied them all at Lawford. The funeral was to be at three o'clock that day, unless Sir William wrote to the contrary. But before that hour an officious surgeon of

Rugby, named Bucknill, came and offered to open the body. The captain seemed angry, and said it would not be fair to the eminent gentlemen who had declined to make the examination. Nevertheless, if Sir William wished it, he might do so on showing his order. The next day a letter came from Sir William, wondering he had not seen Doctor Rattray or Mr. Wilmer, and requesting that Mr. Bucknill and Mr. Snow, of Southam, might open the body. At three o'clock that day Mr. Bucknill came, but, before Mr. Snow arrived, was called away by a patient. On his return, in an hour, Mr. Snow had refused to open the body, the funeral was proceeding, and Mr. Snow had left. Mr. Bucknill, vexed and suspicious, rode off in an angry canter, and that night at seven the young baronet was buried in the family vault at Newbold.

But even now the poor lad was not to rest in peace. The Reverend Mr. Newsom, and Lord Denbigh, a neighbour, roused Sir. William to action by repeating fresh rumours. On the Saturday, three days after the funeral, an inquest was held at Newbold, and Mr. Bucknill, with Doctor Rattray and Wilmer, examined the body. It was too late for useful examination, but Doctor Rattray observed at the time a biting acrid taste on his tongue, such as he had felt in subsequent experiments with laurelwater. The inquest was then adjourned. On the 14th, the day the inquest was resumed, the captain wrote a letter to the coroner, in his bland way, to "give him any information he could collect."

"During the time," he said, in his rather confused way, "Sir Theodosius was here, great part of it was spent in procuring things to kill rats, with which this house swarms remarkably; he used to have arsenic by the pound-weight at a time, and laid the same in and about the house in various places, and in many forms. We often expostulated with him about the extreme careless manner in which he acted. His answer to us was, that the men-servants knew where he had laid the arsenic, and it was no business to us. At table we have not knowingly eaten anything for many months past which we perceived him to touch." The captain also mentioned that Sir The. was in the habit of making up horse medicines and goulardwater, and when he was fishing, attending his rabbits, or at carpenter's work, he would split fish, and lay arsenic in them, for the rats, herons, and otters, and also that he used cocculus indicus for stupefying fish.

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