"Of course, dear uncle."

He kept nodding to himself, for the rest of the way, and was quite happy.

We reached the inn at the landing. He drank, and I drank, too, from the same glass.

"Where are you going?" asked the hostess.

"To the capital," said he, although I had not said a word to him about it. Then, in a whisper, he said to me:

"If you intend to go elsewhere, the people needn't know everything."

I let him have his own way.

I looked for the place where I had wandered at that time. There--there was the rock--and on it a cross, bearing, in golden characters, the inscription:

Here perished
Irma, Countess von Wildenort,
In the twenty-first year
of her life.
Traveler, pray for her and honor her memory.