g daunted, pushed on boldly until a bank of cloud shut
out completely the struggling moon, and closing over the valley
covered it like a pall, leaving him in perfect darkness. At the same
moment the moaning wind died away, and with it died away all sound.
The darkness and the death-like silence sent an icy chill to the heart
of Cuglas. He held his hand close to his eyes, but he saw it not. He
shouted that he might hear the sound of his own voice, but he heard it
not. He stamped his foot on the rocky ground, but no sound was
returned to him. He rattled his sword in its brazen scabbard, but it
gave no answer back to him. His heart grew colder and colder, when
suddenly the cloud above him was rent in a dozen places, and lightning
flashed through the valley, and the thunder rolled over the echoing
mountains. In the lurid glare of the lightning Cuglas saw a hundred
ghostly forms sweeping towards him, uttering as they came nearer and
nearer shrieks so terrible that the silence of death could more easily
be borne. Cuglas turned to escape, but they hemmed him round, and
pressed their clammy hands upon his face.

With a yell of horror he drew his sword and slashed about him, and
that very moment the forms vanished, the thunder ceased, the dark
cloud passed, and the sun shone out as bright as on a summer day, and
then Cuglas knew the forms he had seen were those of the wild people
of the glen.[10]

With renewed courage he pursued his way through the valley, and after
three or four windings it took him out upon a sandy desert. He had no
sooner set foot upon the desert than he heard behind him a crashing
sound louder than thunder. He looked around, and he saw that the walls
of mountain through which he had just passed had fallen into the
valley, and filled it up so that he could no longer tell where it had
been.

The sun was beating fiercely on the desert, and the sands were almost
as hot as burning cinders; and as Cuglas advanced over them his body
became dried up, and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and
when his thirst was at its height a fountain of sparkling water sprang
up in the burning plain a few paces in front of him; but when he came
up quite close to it and stretched out his parched hands to cool them
in the limped waters, the fountain vanished as suddenly as it
appeared. With great pain, and almost choking with heat and thirst, he
struggled on, and again the fountain sprang up in front of him and
moved be