“What the devil are you?” shouted Leo, and his voice echoed drearily among those naked rocks.  But the 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 guessed that the path was narrow and bordered by some gulf, for as we went I heard stones fall, apparently to a considerable depth, while the poor horse lifted its feet gingerly and snorted in abject fear.  At length we saw daylight, and never was I more glad of its advent, although it showed us that there was a gulf on our right, and that the path we travelled could not measure more than ten feet in width.