he creature did not answer, it only
continued to beckon.

Leo walked up to it to assure himself that we were not the victims of
some hallucination. As he came it glided back to its heap of bones and
stood there like a ghost of one dead arisen from amidst these grinning
evidences of death, or rather a swathed corpse, for that is what it
resembled. Leo followed with the intention of touching it to assure
himself of its reality, whereon it lifted its white-wrapped arm and
struck him lightly on the breast. Then as he recoiled it pointed with
its hand, first upwards as though to the Peak or the sky, and next at
the wall of rock which faced us.

He returned to me saying, "What shall we do?"

"Follow, I suppose. It may be a messenger from above," and I nodded
toward the mountain crest.

"From below, more likely," Leo muttered, "for I don't like the look of
this guide."

Still he motioned with his hand to the creature to proceed. Apparently
it understood, for it turned to the left and began to pick its way
amongst the stones and skeletons swiftly and without noise. We followed
for several hundred yards till it reached a shallow cleft in the rock.
This cleft we had seen already, but as it appeared to end at a depth of
about thirty feet, we passed on. The figure entered here and vanished.

"It must be a shadow," said Leo doubtfully.

"Nonsense," I answered, "shadows don't strike one. Go on."

So he led the horse up the cleft, to find that at the end it turned
sharply to the right and that the form was standing there awaiting us.
Forward it went again and we after it down a little gorge that grew ever
gloomier till it terminated in what might have been a cave, or a gallery
cut in the rock.

Here our guide came back to us apparently with the intention of taking
the horse by the bridle, but at this nearer sight of it the brute
snorted and reared up, so that it almost fell backwards upon me. As
it found its feet again the figure struck it on the head in the same
passionless, inhuman way that it had struck Leo, whereon the horse
trembled and burst into a sweat as though with fear, making no further
attempt to escape or to disobey. Then it took one side of the bridle
in its swathed hand and, Leo clinging to the other, we plunged into the
tunnel.

Our position was not pleasant, for we knew not whither we were being led
by this horrible conductor, and suspected that it might be to meet our
deaths in the darkness. Moreover, I