r, floated
out through the window.

The prince returned to his couch, and the next morning, as soon as he
heard the queen had left the palace, he hastened to the banquet hall.
He discovered the door and descended the steps, and he found himself
in a gloomy and lonesome valley. Jagged mountains, black as night, rose
on either side, and huge rocks seemed ready to topple down upon him at
every step. Through broken clouds a watery moon shed a faint, fitful
light, that came and went as the clouds, driven by a moaning wind,
passed over the valley.

Cuglas, nothing 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 deathlike 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.[7]

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