“Now that we are no longer unknown to each other,” said I, “may I ask, without committing an indiscretion, if I can use the free time at my disposal in your interests?”

“You are very good, Mr Roy.  It is the characteristic of your nation to be kind-hearted and readily interested in strangers.”  Was this sarcastic?  I wondered.  Perhaps; but he said it quite courteously.  “I am a solitary and unfortunate man.  Before I accept your kindness, will you permit me to tell you the nature of the journey I am making?  It is a strange one.”

He spoke huskily, and with evident effort.  I assented eagerly.

The following, recounted in broken sentences, and with many abrupt pauses, is the story to which I listened: 

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, to be renewed before daybreak with fresh assistance from the nearest village.  Some of the new-comers spoke of a cave on the slope of the meadow, into which the boy might have crept.  This was easily reached.  It was apparently of but small extent; a few goats reposed in it, but no trace of the child was discoverable.  After some days spent in futile endeavour, all hope was abandoned.  The father returned to England to mourn his lost boy, and another disaster was added to the annual list of casualties in the Alps.