hed the broken piece, the only difference he made
was to walk with great caution, and plant his feet deeply into the
earth, bidding Walter follow in the traces he made, and supporting him
firmly with his hand. They got across in much less time than Walter had
occupied in his first passage, and as they reached Appenfell they saw
the two boys standing dimly on the verge of the moonlit mist, while all
below them the rest of Appenfell was still wrapt, as in some great
cerecloth, by the snowy folds of seething cloud.

"Good heavens! but who are those?" said Walter, pointing to two shadowy
and gigantic figures which also faced them. "O, _who_ are those?" he
asked wildly, and in such alarm that if the shepherd had not seized him
firmly he must have fallen.

"There, there--don't be frighted," said Giles; "those be'ant no ghosts,
but they be just our own shadows on the mist. It's a queer thing, but
I've seen it often and often on these hills, and some scholards have
told me as how that kind of thing be'ant uncommon on mountains."

"What a goose I was to be so horribly frightened," said Walter; "but I
didn't know that there were any spectres of that sort on Appenfell. All
right, Giles; go on."

Till Walter and the shepherd had taken their last step from the Devil's
Way on to the side of Appenfell, the boys stood watching them in intense
silence; but no sooner were they safe, than Power and Kenrick ran up to
Walter, poured out their eager thanks, and pressed his hands in all the
fervour of affectionate gratitude. They felt that his courage and
readiness had, at the risk of his own life, saved them from such a
danger as they had never in their lives experienced before. Already
they were suffering with hunger and shuddering with the December air,
their limbs felt quite benumbed, their teeth were chattering
lugubriously, and their faces were blue and pinched with cold. They
eagerly devoured the brown bread and potato-cake which the man had
brought, and let him and Walter chafe a little life into their
shivering-bodies. By this time fear was sufficiently removed to enable
them to feel some sort of appreciation of the wild beauty of the scene,
as the moonlight pierced on their left the flitting scuds of restless
mist, and on their right fell softly over Bardlyn hill, making a weird
contrast between the tender brightness of the places where it fell, and
the pitchy gloom that hid the depths of the rift, and brooded in those
u