He was not the first person to be buried by a fall of sand.

Why, only a little while ago the same fate overtook a nursery-governess and the child in her charge who were trying to dig out a martin's nest in a pit in this very parish.

Their operations brought down a huge mass of the overhanging bank beneath which the sand-vein had been hollowed by workmen who deserted the pit when they saw that it had become unsafe.
Next day I and my gardeners helped to recover their bodies, for their whereabouts was not discovered until the following morning, and a sad business it was.
Yet, taken in conjunction with the history of this couple, the whole Ragnall affair was very strange.

When but a child Lady Ragnall, then the Hon.

Miss Holmes, had been identified by the priests of a remote African tribe as the oracle of their peculiar faith, which we afterwards proved to be derived from old Egypt, in short the worship of Isis and Horus.
Subsequently they tried to steal her away and through the accident of my intervention, failed.