a low, half-subdued
murmuring seemed to rise from the deep glens around me. At first I
deemed they were self-delusions; but as I listened I could distinctly
trace the sounds as they rose and fell, swelling now to a deep rolling
noise, and then dying away in soft fading cadences.

My mind was stored with stories of supernatural interest, and if I did
not implicitly believe the existence of such agencies, yet I cannot
affirm that I altogether rejected them. I was in that state in which,
while reason is unconvinced, the imagination is still impressed, and
fears and terrors hold sway, when the very causes of them were stoutly
denied reality. One of the commonest of all the superstitions of
mountain regions is the belief in a certain genius who invariably
resists the intrusion of mortals within the precincts of his realm. The
terrible tales of his vengeance form the subject of Alpine horrors, and
the dreadful miseries of those who have incurred his displeasure point
the moral of many a story, and "the Kobold of the Lost Glen" held a
proud pre-eminence among such narratives. The heat, as I have said, grew
oppressive; it became at last almost stifling, for the clouds descended
near the earth, and the atmosphere became dense and suffocating. A
few heavy drops of rain then fell, pattering slowly and lazily on the
leaves; and then, as if at the word of some dread command, the thunder
rolled forth in one long, loud, continuous peal that seemed to shake the
very mountains. Crash after crash followed, till the very rocks seemed
splitting with the loud artillery, while through the darkness of the
murky air great sheets of yellow lightning gleamed, and long chains of
the bright element zig-zagged through the sky; the rain, too, began to
fall in torrents, and almost at once the mountain streams swelled
and bounded in foamy cataracts from cliff and precipice. The din was
deafening; and the loud crashing thunder with the hissing rain, the
rushing rivers, and the dense shaking forests made up a grand and awful
chorus. For a while I found a shelter beneath the thick foliage of the
hollies, but the sweeping wind at last rent this frail sanctuary in
twain, and in a moment I was drenched thoroughly.

Although still early in the afternoon, a premature night seemed to have
set in, for the air grew darker and darker, till at length the mountains
at either side of the glen were lost to sight, and a dense watery vapor
surrounded the crag on which