"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 undefined hollows over which the precipices leaned.