rmometer, which also rattled
down the abyss.

"You say," whispered Mrs. Knollys, "that it can never be recovered!"

"Madam," spoke the Doctor, doffing his hat, "how would you recofer
from a blace when the smallest approximation which I haf yet been able
to make puts the depth from the surface to the bed of the gletscher at
vrom sixteen hundred to sixteen hundred and sixty _metres_ in
distance?" Doctor Zimmermann spoke very good English; and he pushed
his hat upon the back of his head, and assumed his professional
attitude.

"But they all were trying----" Mrs. Knollys spoke faintly. "They said
that they hoped he could be recovered." The stranger was the oldest
gentleman she had seen, and Mrs. Knollys felt almost like confiding in
him. "Oh, I must have the--the body." She closed in a sob; but the
Herr Doctor caught at the last word, and this suggested to him only
the language of scientific experiment.

"Recofer it? If, madam," Zimmermann went on with all the satisfaction
attendant on the enunciation of a scientific truth, "we take a body
and drop it in the schrund of this gletscher; and the ice-stream moves
so slower at its base than on the upper part, and the ice will cover
it; efen if we could reach the base, which is a mile in depth. Then,
see you, it is all caused by the motion of the ice----"

But at this Mrs. Knollys had given a faint cry, and her guide rushed
up angrily to the old professor, who stared helplessly forward. "God
will help me, sir," said she to the Doctor, and she gave the guide her
arm and walked wearily away.

The professor still stared in amazement at her enthusiasm for
scientific experiment and the passion with which she greeted his
discoveries. Here was a person who utterly refused to be referred to
the agency of ice, or even, like Spluethner, of Fire and Water; and
went out of the range of allowable hypotheses to call upon a Noumenon.
Now both Spluethner and Zimmermann had studied all natural agencies and
made allowance for them, but for the Divine they had always hitherto
proved an alibi. The Doctor could make nothing of it.

At the inn that evening he saw Mrs. Knollys with swollen eyes; and
remembering the scene of the afternoon, he made inquiries about her of
the innkeeper. The latter had heard the guide's account of the
meeting; and as soon as Zimmermann had made plain what he had told her
of the falling body, "Triple blockhead!" said he. "_Es war ihr Mann._"
The Herr Professor stag