uld be avoided. In 1861 a Comtesse
d'Herlincourt fell from her saddle over the precipice and was killed on
the spot."

We looked over the precipice there, and saw the monument which
commemorates the event. It stands in the bottom of the gorge, in a place
which has been hollowed out of the rock to protect it from the torrent
and the storms. Our old guide never spoke but when spoken to, and then
limited himself to a syllable or two, but when we asked him about this
tragedy he showed a strong interest in the matter. He said the Countess
was very pretty, and very young--hardly out of her girlhood, in fact.
She was newly married, and was on her bridal tour. The young husband was
riding a little in advance; one guide was leading the husband's horse,
another was leading the bride's.

The old man continued:

"The guide that was leading the husband's horse happened to glance back,
and there was that poor young thing sitting up staring out over the
precipice; and her face began to bend downward a little, and she put
up her two hands slowly and met it--so,--and put them flat against her
eyes--so--and then she sank out of the saddle, with a sharp shriek, and
one caught only the flash of a dress, and it was all over."

Then after a pause:

"Ah, yes, that guide saw these things--yes, he saw them all. He saw them
all, just as I have told you."

After another pause:

"Ah, yes, he saw them all. My God, that was ME. I was that guide!"

This had been the one event of the old man's life; so one may be sure he
had forgotten no detail connected with it. We listened to all he had to
say about what was done and what happened and what was said after the
sorrowful occurrence, and a painful story it was.

When we had wound down toward the valley until we were about on the last
spiral of the corkscrew, Harris's hat blew over the last remaining
bit of precipice--a small cliff a hundred or hundred and fifty feet
high--and sailed down toward a steep slant composed of rough chips and
fragments which the weather had flaked away from the precipices. We went
leisurely down there, expecting to find it without any trouble, but we
had made a mistake, as to that. We hunted during a couple of hours--not
because the old straw hat was valuable, but out of curiosity to find
out how such a thing could manage to conceal itself in open ground where
there was nothing left for it to hide behind. When one is reading in
bed, and lays his paper-knife down