Hour after hour did we wait, listening to every sound, trembling at
every breath; and so shaken and weakened by intolerable suspense, that
we were ill-fitted to think and to act as occasion might require. It was
a dark, cloudy, and windy night. We often looked out, but could see
nothing, scarcely even the outline of the mountain. We listened, and our
hearts beat thick, when there was no sound but the rising gust! I dwell
on these circumstances too long, because I recoil from relating the
catastrophe, as if it were but recent--as if my thoughts had not been
familiarized with it for years.

It was as we feared; he was found lying at the bottom of a rock, no more
than ten feet high--but lifeless. His neck had been dislocated by the
fall. There were no external bruises--no signs of any struggle--nothing
painful in his appearance. I cannot relate every circumstance of that
dreadful night. I thought _she_ was gone too; she was brought in,
insensible, and remained so for hours. She was taken immediately to my
house, and put to bed. The body of her brother was also carried there,
for I knew she would not be separated from it. I sat beside her,
watching her faint breathing, anxious for some sign of returning
consciousness, but dreading the agony which must attend it. If she had
died, I could hardly have grieved for her; but there might be parents,
brothers, and sisters! Oh, that I knew, that I could bring them to her!
Alone, among strangers! how was she to bear her solitary grief?--how was
she to sustain the struggle which awaited her in the first hour of her
awakening? I could not banish the remembrance of them as I had seen them
in the afternoon; happy in each other, and thinking not of separation;
then, as he was when I last saw him, full of life and acuity, and
apparently unboundedly happy, in the contemplation of scenes which a
soul like his was fitted to enjoy.