successfully passed the first or upper fall. But, unhappily, the same
good fortune failed them in their next descent, for "the boat was
swamped and sunk in passing the lower fall, and was supposed to have
been jammed in a cleft of the submerged rock, as neither boat nor
adventurers ever appeared again. In the same week, the ancient seat of
the family, Cowdray Castle, was destroyed by fire, and its venerable
ruins are the significant monument at once of the fulfilment of the
old monk's prophecy, and of the extinction of the race of the great
and powerful noble."

It is further added that the last inheritor of the title--the
immediate successor and cousin of the ill-fated young nobleman of
Schaffhausen, Anthony Browne, the last Montague, who died at the
opening of this century--left no male issue, and his estates devolved
on his only daughter, who married Mr. Stephen Poyntz, a great
Buckinghamshire landlord. Some years after their marriage Mr. Poyntz
was desirous of obtaining a grant of the dormant title "Viscount
Montague" in favour of the elder of his two sons, issue of this
marriage; but his hopes were suddenly destroyed by the death of the
two boys, who were drowned while bathing at Bognor, the "fatal water"
thus becoming the means, in fulfilment of the monk's terrible
denunciation on the family in his fearful curse.

In a similar manner the great Tichborne trial followed, it is said,
upon the fulfilment, in a manner, of a prophecy, respecting that
ancient family, made more than seven hundred years before. When the
Lady Mabelle Tichborne, wife of the Sir Roger who flourished in the
reign of Henry II., was lying on her death-bed, she besought her
husband to grant her the means of leaving behind her a charitable
bequest in the form of an annual dole of bread. To gratify her whim,