Page:1880. A Tramp Abroad.djvu/407

 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 sunk 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 a hundred and fifty feet high,—and sailed down towards 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 for it to hide behind. When one is reading in bed, and lays his paper-knife down, he cannot find it again if it is smaller than a sabre; that hat was as stubborn as any paper-knife could have been, and we