o understand what follows.

He seated himself on the pinnacle of the rocky precipice, a little
within the top of the hill to the westward, and, with a light and
buoyant heart, viewed the beauties of the morning, and inhaled its
salubrious breeze. "Here," thought he, "I can converse with nature
without disturbance, and without being intruded on by any appalling or
obnoxious visitor." The idea of his brother's dark and malevolent looks
coming at that moment across his mind, he turned his eyes instinctively
to the right, to the point where that unwelcome guest was wont to make
his appearance. Gracious Heaven! What an apparition was there presented
to his view! He saw, delineated in the cloud, the shoulders, arms, and
features of a human being of the most dreadful aspect. The face was the
face of his brother, but dilated to twenty times the natural size. Its
dark eyes gleamed on him through the mist, while every furrow of its
hideous brow frowned deep as the ravines on the brow of the hill.
George started, and his hair stood up in bristles as he gazed on this
horrible monster. He saw every feature and every line of the face
distinctly as it gazed on him with an intensity that was hardly
brookable. Its eyes were fixed on him, in the same manner as those of
some carnivorous animal fixed on its prey; and yet there was fear and
trembling in these unearthly features, as plainly depicted as murderous
malice. The giant apparition seemed sometimes to be cowering down as in
terror, so that nothing but his brow and eyes were seen; still these
never turned one moment from their object--again it rose imperceptively
up, and began to approach with great caution; and, as it neared, the
dimensions of its form lessened, still continuing, however, far above
the natural size.

George conceived it to be a spirit. He could conceive it to be nothing
else; and he took it for some horrid demon by which he was haunted,
that had assumed the features of his brother in every lineament, but,
in taking on itself the human form, had miscalculated dreadfully on the
size, and presented itself thus to him in a blown-up, dilated frame of
embodied air, exhaled from the caverns of death or the regions of
devouring fire. He was further confirmed in the belief that it was a
malignant spirit on perceiving that it approached him across the front
of a precipice, where there was not footing for thing of mortal frame.
Still, what with terror and astonishment, he con