I think it was one of those _fêtes_--if not, another bright summer holiday--that I once saw darkly disturbed in this quiet little hamlet. Standing upon the table-rock that juts out at the foot of the fall so as to half-bridge over the lower-most eddy, I saw a small object topple over the summit of the cascade. It was nothing but a common pail or stable-bucket, as I perceived, when it glided past, almost within arm's length of me, and disappeared down the winding gorge. When I went up again to the road, I saw a crowd of holiday people standing near the little inn. They were solemn and speechless, and, on approaching, I saw that they were gazing upon the body of a man, dead and sadly crushed and mutilated. He was a _calèche_-driver from Quebec, well known to the small community; and although it does not seem any great height from the roadway near the inn to the tumbled rocks by the river's edge just above the fall, yet it was a drop to mash and kill the poor fellow dead enough, when his foot slipped, as he descended the unsafe path to get water for his horse. A dweller in great cities--say, for instance, one who lives within decent distance of such a charming locality as that called the Five Points in New York--could hardly realize the amount of awe that an event so trifling as a sudden and violent death will spread over a primitive village community. This happened in the French division of the place, which, of course, was decorated to the utmost ability of the people in honor of the _fête_: and so palpable was the gloom cast over all by the circumstance, that the bright flannels flaunting from the _cordons_ stretched across the way seemed to darken into palls, and the gay red streamers must have appeared to the subdued carnival spirits as warning crape-knots on the door-handle of death.