About three weeks afterwards, on the 7th of October, the Queen had an alarming accident. She was returning from Altnagiuthasach with two of her daughters in the darkness of an autumn evening, when the carriage was upset in the middle of the moorland. Her Majesty was thrown with her face on the ground, but escaped with some bruises and a hurt to one of her thumbs. No one else was injured. The ladies sat down in the overturned carriage after the traces had been cut and the coachman despatched for assistance. There was no water to be had, nothing but claret to bathe the Queen's hand and face. In about half an hour voices and horses' hoofs were heard. It was the ponies which had been sent away before the accident, but the servant who accompanied them, alarmed by the non-appearance of the Queen and by the sight of lights moving about, rode back to reconnoitre. Her Majesty and the Princesses mounted the ponies, which were led home. At Balmoral no one knew what had happened; the Queen herself told the accident to her two sons-in- law who were at the door awaiting her. Six days afterwards the Queen made her first appearance in public since the Prince's death a year and nine months before, at the unveiling of his statue in Aberdeen. She was accompanied by the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse, Princesses Helena and Louise, and Princes Arthur and Leopold. The day was one of pouring rain, and the long silent procession was sad and strange. The Queen was trembling; she had no one as on former occasions to direct and support her. She received the Provost's address, and returned a written reply. She conferred the honour of knighthood on the magistrate, the first time she had performed the ceremony "since all was ended." On the 14th of December the Queen and her family visited the mausoleum, [Footnote: Dr. Norman Macleod describes an earlier visit in March, 1863 "I walked with Lady Augusta to the mausoleum to meet the Queen. She was accompanied by Princess Alice. She had the key, and opened it herself, undoing the bolts, and alone we entered and stood in silence beside Marochetti's beautiful statue of the Prince. I was very much overcome. She was calm and quiet."] to which she went constantly on every return to Windsor. Princess Alice in her published letters calls the sarcophagus--with the exquisite decorations which were in progress, and cost more than two hundred thousand pounds paid from her Majesty's private purse--"that wonderfully beautiful tomb" by which her mother prayed. It became the practice to have a religious service celebrated there in the presence of the Queen and the royal family on the anniversary of the Prince's death. In December Lady Augusta Bruce left the Queen's service on her marriage with Dean Stanley. On the night of the 23rd of December Thackeray died.