The face was the face
of his brother, but dilated to twenty times the natural size. Its dark
eyes gleamed on him through the mist, while every furrow of its
hideous brow frowned deep as the ravines on the brow of the hill.
George started, and his hair stood up in bristles as he gazed on
this horrible monster. He saw every feature and every line of the
face distinctly as it gazed on him with an intensity that was hardly
brookable. Its eyes were fixed on him, in the same manner as
those of some carnivorous animal fixed on its prey; and yet there
was fear and trembling in these unearthly features, as plainly
depicted as murderous malice. The giant apparition seemed
sometimes to be cowering down as in terror, so that nothing but
his brow and eyes were seen; still these never turned one moment
from their object--again it rose imperceptively up, and began to
approach with great caution; and, as it neared, the dimensions of
its form lessened, still continuing, however, far above the natural
size.
George conceived it to be a spirit. He could conceive it to be
nothing else; and he took it for some horrid demon by which he
was haunted, that had assumed the features of his brother in
every lineament, but, in taking on itself the human form, had
miscalculated dreadfully on the size, and presented itself thus to
him in a blown-up, dilated frame of embodied air, exhaled from
the caverns of death or the regions of devouring fire.
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