18883    I said, pulling the letter from my pocket.

18884    'There is no sick Englishwoman in the hotel?'

18885    'Certainly not,' he cried.

18886    'But it has the hotel mark upon it!

18887    Ha! it must have been written by that tall Englishman who came in after you had gone.

18888    He said

18889    - 'But I waited for none of the landlord's explanations.

18890    In a tingle of fear I was already running down the village street, and making for the path which I had so lately descended.

18891    It had taken me an hour to come down.

18892    For all my efforts, two more had passed before I found myself at the fall of Reichenbach once more.

18893    There was Holmes's Alpine-stock still leaning against the rock by which I had left him.

18894    But there was no sign of him, and it was in vain that I shouted.

18895    My only answer was my own voice reverberating in a rolling echo from the cliffs around me.

18896    It was the sight of that Alpine-stock which turned me cold and sick.

18897    He had not gone to Rosenlaui, then.