valley. Whilst crossing a dangerous pass the carriage containing an
English lady and the driver had fallen over a precipice, the gentleman
of the party, Mr. Geoffrey Brent, having been fortunately saved as he
had been walking up the hill to ease the horses. He gave information,
and search was made. The broken rail, the excoriated roadway, the marks
where the horses had struggled on the decline before finally pitching
over into the torrent--all told the sad tale. It was a wet season, and
there had been much snow in the winter, so that the river was swollen
beyond its usual volume, and the eddies of the stream were packed with
ice. All search was made, and finally the wreck of the carriage and the
body of one horse were found in an eddy of the river. Later on the body
of the driver was found on the sandy, torrent-swept waste near Täsch;
but the body of the lady, like that of the other horse, had quite
disappeared, and was--what was left of it by that time--whirling amongst
the eddies of the Rhone on its way down to the Lake of Geneva.

Wykham Delandre made all the enquiries possible, but could not find any
trace of the missing woman. He found, however, in the books of the
various hotels the name of 'Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Brent'. And he had a
stone erected at Zermatt to his sister's memory, under her married name,
and a tablet put up in the church at Bretten, the parish in which both
Brent's Rock and Dander's Croft were situated.

There was a lapse of nearly a year, after the excitement of the matter
had worn away, and the whole neighbourhood had gone on its accustomed
way. Brent was still absent, and Delandre more drunken, more morose, and
more revengeful than before.

Then there was a new excitement. Brent's Rock was being made ready for a
new mistress. It was officially announced by Geoffrey himself in a