It is nought to me, nought to the Thing-that-should-never-have-been-born." Thus he rambled on, as it occurred to me who watched and listened, talking against time.

For I observed that while he spoke a cloud was passing over the face of the moon, and that when he ceased speaking it was quite obscured by this cloud, so that the Vale of Bones was plunged in a deep twilight that was almost darkness.

Further, in a nervous kind of way, he did something more to his wizard's fire which again caused it to throw out a fan of smoke that hid him and the execution rock in front of which he sat.
The cloud floated by and the moon came out as though from an eclipse; the smoke of the fire, too, thinned by degrees.

As it melted and the light grew again, I became aware that something was materializing, or had appeared on the point of the rock above us.

A few seconds later, to my wonder and amazement, I perceived that this something was the spirit-like form of a white woman which stood quite still upon the very point of the rock.