Angel got out of her jampan, and stood to gaze at it, where it lay locked among the mountains. Chamoli Lake was much larger and far more beautiful than she expected. It looked majestically still and dignified, as if it had been lying in the lap of the mountains from ages remote, instead of being the three months' old child of the rains and the snows. In colour it was a wonderful limpid green, its face was placid and inscrutable, and yet it embodied the dread of thousands. The slip, which left a mark like a scar, had fallen from the side of a precipitous hill, five thousand feet above the bed of the river, and carried the rocks and débris from the right bank, across the valley, and half-way up the hill. There, its energy expended, the mass slipped down into the bed of the stream, forming a dam, composed of masses of enormous rocks. Close to this barrier, but well above it, was a telegraph station, and half a mile further on, at a point outside the dam, and overlooking the lake, and the valley into which it would escape, was a collection of flat stone-roofed huts, the village of Dhuri. Further still, an encampment, a large rest house, and several recently erected wooden huts. One of these had been reserved for Mrs. Gascoigne, and furnished with a certain amount of rude comfort. As she stood at the entrance of her dwelling, and surveyed the great still lake among its towering mountains, the narrow rocky valley with its twisting gorges, and precipitous walls, she found the scene extraordinarily soothing to her spirit—it was so wild—so strange—and so peaceful.