After blazing for some time, the fire faded gradually away into darkness, and the rest of Max's watch was only disturbed by the remembrance of its terrors.
George now occupied the place of Max, who had retired to rest.

The phenomenon of a huge blazing fire, upon the opposite bank of the glen, again presented itself to the eye of the watchman.

It was surrounded as before by figures, which, distinguished by their opaque forms, being between the spectator and the red glaring light, moved and fluctuated around it as if engaged in some mystical ceremony.

George, though equally cautious, was of a bolder character than his elder brother.
He resolved to examine more nearly the object of his wonder; and, accordingly after crossing the rivulet which divided the glen, he climbed up the opposite bank, and approached within an arrow's flight of the fire, which blazed apparently with the same fury as when he first witnessed it.
The appearance, of the assistants who surrounded it resembled those phantoms which are seen in a troubled dream, and at once confirmed the idea he had entertained from the first, that they did not belong to the human world.

Amongst these strange unearthly forms, George Waldeck distinguished that of a giant overgrown with hair, holding an uprooted fir in his hand, with which, from time to time, he seemed to stir the blazing fire, and having no other clothing than a wreath of oak leaves around his forehead and loins.