That view was Philip’s chief comfort.  The boy was feeling more eerie and uncomfortable than ever he had been before as he plodded along, sinking deep with every step almost up to his ankles in the sand, on which the bare-footed guide ran lightly, and Berenger, though sinking no less deeply, seemed insensible to all inconveniences.  This desolateness was well-nigh unbearable; no one dared to speak while Berenger thus moved on in the unapproachableness of his great grief, and Philip presently began to feel a dreamy sense that they had all thus been moving for years, that this was the world’s end, the land of shadows, and that his brother was a ghost already.  Besides vague alarms like these, there was the dismal English and Protestant prejudice in full force in Philip’s mind, which regarded the resent ground as necessarily hostile, and all Frenchmen, above all French priests, as in league to cut off every Englishman and Protestant.  He believed himself in a country full of murderers, and was walking on with the one determination that his brother should not rush on danger without him, and that the Popish rogues should be kept in mind that there was an English ship in sight.  Alas! that consolation was soon lost, for a dense gray mist was slowly creeping in from the sea, and blotted out the vessel, then gathered in closer, and obliterated all landmarks.  Gradually it turned to a heavy rain, and about the same time the ground on which they walked became no longer loose sand-hills, but smooth and level.  It was harder likewise from the wet, and this afforded better walking, but there lay upon it fragments of weed and shell, as though it were liable to be covered by the sea, and there was a low, languid plash of the tide, which could not be seen.  Twilight began to deepen the mist.  The guide was evidently uneasy; he sidled up to Philip, and began to ask what he—­hitherto obstinately deaf and contemptuous to French—­was very slow to comprehend.  At last he found it was a question how near it was to All Soul’s day; and then came an equally amazing query whether the gentlemen’s babe had been baptized; for it appeared that on All Soul’s day the spirits of unchristened infants had the power of rising from the sands in a bewildering mist, and leading wayfarers into the sea.  And the poor guide, white and drenched, vowed he never would have undertaken this walk if he had only thought of this.  These slaughters of heretics must so much have augmented the number of the poor little spirits; and no doubt Monsieur would be specially bewildered by one so nearly concerned with him.  Philip, half frightened, could not help stepping forward and pulling Berenger by the cloak to make him aware of this strange peril; but he did not get much comfort.  ’Baptized?  Yes; you know she was, by the old nurse.  Let me alone, I say.  I would follow her wherever she called me, the innocent, and glad—­the sooner the better.’