CHAPTER XIX.
DEMON, OR WHAT?
I have been free from superstitious terror as most men, yet there were few in those days who did not yield to the sway of the supernatural.
Occasionally, among those of higher education, there may have been leaders of thought who had shaken off these ghostly chains of the dark ages, seeking amid the laws of nature a solution for all the seeming mysteries in human life.

Yet it could scarcely be expected a plain wood-ranger should rise altogether above the popular spell which still made of the Devil a very potent personality.
Consequently, as my anxious eyes uplifted toward the spot where De Noyan pointed, it need be no occasion for wonder that my blood turned to ice in my veins, and I felt convinced I looked upon His Satanic Majesty.

The vast wall of rock, arising a sheer hundred feet directly opposite to where we lay, appeared densely black now in the shadow, but as my glance swept higher along its irregularity, the upper edge, jagged from outcropping stones, stood clearly revealed in the full silver sheen of the moon, each exposed line, carven as from marble, standing distinctly forth in delicate tracery against the background of the night sky.
Appearing to my affrighted eyes the gigantic form of two men strangely merged into one, there uprose on that summit a figure so odd, weird, and grimly fantastic, it was small wonder I gazed, never thinking it could be other than the Evil One.

It was unclothed from head to heel, and, gleaming ghastly white beneath the moonbeams, it brought no Indian suggestion to mind.

High above the head, causing the latter to appear hideously deformed, arose something the nature of which I could not rightly judge.