Mr St Aubyn was a widower. His only child, a boy twelve years of age,
had been for a year past afflicted with loss of speech and hearing,
the result of a severe typhoid fever, from which he barely escaped
with life. Last summer, his father, following medical advice, brought
him to Switzerland, in the hope that Alpine air, change of scene,
exercise, and the pleasure of the trip, would restore him to his
normal condition. One day father and son, led by a guide, were
ascending a mountain pathway, not ordinarily regarded as dangerous,
when the boy, stepping aside to view the snowy ranges above and
around, slipped on a treacherous fragment of half-detached rock,
and went sliding into the ravine beneath. The height of the fall
was by no means great, and the level ground on which the boy would
necessarily alight was overgrown with soft herbage and long grass,
so that neither the father nor the guide at first conceived any
serious apprehensions for the safety of the boy's life or limbs.
He might be bruised, perhaps even a few cuts or a sprained wrist
might disable him for a few days, but they feared nothing worse
than these. As quickly as the slippery ground would permit, they
descended the winding path leading to the meadow, but when they
reached it, the boy was nowhere to be seen. Hours passed in vain
and anxious quest; no track, no sound, no clue assisted the seekers,
and the shouts of the guide, if they reached, as doubtless they did,
the spot where the lost boy lay, fell on ears as dull and deadened
as those of a corpse. Nor could the boy, if crippled by his fall,
and unable to show himself, give evidence of his whereabouts by
so much as a single cry. Both tongue and ears were sealed by
infirmity, and any low sound such as that he might have been able
to utter would have been rendered inaudible by the torrent rushing
through the ravine hard by. At nightfall the search was suspended,