I have done all I have to do in the town, and my pack is on my shoulders. It is Sunday, and a fine clear day. I look in at the hotel, to see the porter; he is going with me a bit of the way up the river. The great good-hearted fellow offers to carry my things--as if I could not carry them myself. We go up along the right bank; but the road itself lies on the left; the way we are taking is only a summer path, trodden only by the lumbermen, and with some few fresh tracks in the snow. My companion cannot make out why we do not follow the road: he was always dull of wit; but I have been up this path twice before these last few days, and I am going up it once again. It is my own tracks we can see all the time. I question him: “That lady you told me about once--the one that was drowned--was it somewhere about here?” “Eh? Oh, the one that fell in! Yes. Ay, it was close by here. Dreadful it was. There must have been twenty of us here, with the police, searching about.” “Dragging the channel?” “Yes. We got out planks and ladders, but they broke through under us; we cut up all the ice in the end. Here”--he stopped suddenly--“you can see the way we went.” I can see in the dark space where the boats had moved out and broken through the ice to drag the depth; it was frozen over again now. The porter goes on: “We found her at last. And a mercy it was, I dare say. The river was low as it was. Gone right down at once, she had, and got stuck fast between two stones. There was no current to speak of; if it had been spring, now, she'd have travelled a long way down.” “Trying to cross to the other side, I suppose?”