The Queen's greatest solace this year was in long days spent on the purple mountains and by the sides of the brown lochs, and in a second private expedition, like that of the previous year to Grantown, when she slept a night at the Ramsay Arms in the village of Fettercairn, and Prince Louis and General Grey were consigned to the Temperance Hotel opposite. The whole party walked out in the moonlight and were startled by a village band. The return was by Blair, where the Queen was welcomed by her former host and hostess, the Duke and Duchess of Athole. Her Majesty had a look at her earlier quarters, at the room in which the little Princess Royal had been put to bed in two chairs, and saw Sandy Macara, grown old and grey. After an excursion to Cairn Glaishie, her Majesty recorded in her journal, "Alas! I fear our last great one." Six years afterwards the sorrowful confirmation was given to words which had been written with a very different meaning, "It was our last one." The Prince of Wales was on a visit to Germany, ostensibly to witness the manoeuvres of the Prussian army, but with a more delicate mission behind. He was bound, while not yet twenty, to make the acquaintance of the Princess Alexandra of Denmark, not quite seventeen, with the probability of their future marriage--a prospect which, to the great regret of the Prince Consort, got almost immediately into the newspapers. The first meetings of the young couple took place at Speyer and Heidelberg, and were altogether promising of the mutual attachment which was the desired result. On the 18th of October the King of Prussia was crowned at Könisburg--a splendid ceremonial, in which the Princess Royal naturally, as the Crown Princess, bore a prominent part. On the return of the Court to Windsor, Prince Leopold, then between eight and nine years of age, was sent, with a temporary household, to spend the winter in the south of France for the sake of his health. Suddenly a great and painful shock was given to the Queen and the Prince by the news of the disastrous outbreak of typhoid fever in Portugal among their royal cousins and intimate friends, the sons of Maria de Gloria. When the tidings arrived King Pedro's brother, Prince Ferdinand, was already dead, and the King ill. Two more brothers, the Duke of Oporto and the Duke of Beja, were in England, on their way home from the King of Prussia's coronation. The following day still sadder news arrived--the recovery of the young king, not more than twenty-five, was despaired of. His two brothers started immediately for Lisbon, but were too late to see him in life. The younger, the Duke of Beja, was also seized with the fatal fever and died in the course of the following month. The Queen and the Prince lamented the King deeply, finding the only consolation in the fact that he had rejoined the gentle girl-wife for whose loss he had been inconsolable. CHAPTER XXXV. THE DEATH OF THE PRINCE CONSORT.