I may mention something which now occurred, and which had a strange effect on my old nurse.  It illustrates the assertion that we see around us only what is within us; marvellous things enough will show themselves to the marvellous mood.  During a short lull in the storm, just as she had finished her story, we heard the sound of iron-shod hoofs approaching the cottage.  There was no bridle-way into the glen.  A knock came to the door, and, on opening it, we saw an old man seated on a horse, with a long, slenderly-filled sack lying across the saddle before him.  He said he had lost the path in the storm, and, seeing the light, had scrambled down to inquire his way.  I perceived at once, from the scared and mysterious look of the old woman’s eyes, that she was persuaded that this appearance had more than a little to do with the awful rider, the terrific storm, and myself who had heard the sound of the phantom hoofs.  As he ascended the hill, she looked after him, with wide and pale but unshrinking eyes; then turning in, shut and locked the door behind her, as by a natural instinct.  After two or three of her significant nods, accompanied by the compression of her lips, she said:—­

“He need not think to take me in, wizard as he is, with his disguises.  I can see him through them all.  Duncan, my dear, when you suspect anything, do not be too incredulous.  This human demon is, of course, a wizard still, and knows how to make himself, as well as anything he touches, take a quite different appearance from the real one; only every appearance must bear some resemblance, however distant, to the natural form.  That man you saw at the door, was the phantom of which I have been telling you.  What he is after now, of course, I cannot tell; but you must keep a bold heart, and a firm and wary foot, as you go home to-night.”

I showed some surprise, I do not doubt, and, perhaps, some fear as well; but I only said:  “How do you know him, Margaret?”

“I can hardly tell you,” she replied; “but I do know him.  I think he hates me.  Often, of a wild night, when there is moonlight enough by fits, I see him tearing round this little valley, just on the top edge—­all round; the lady’s hair and the horse’s mane and tail driving far behind, and mingling, vaporous, with the stormy clouds.  About he goes, in wild careering gallop; now lost as the moon goes in, then visible far round when she looks out again—­an airy, pale-grey spectre, which few eyes but mine could see; for, as far as I am aware, no one of the family but myself has ever possessed the double gift of seeing and hearing both.  In this case I hear no sound, except now and then a clank from the broken shoe.  But I did not mean to tell you that I had ever seen him.  I am not a bit afraid of him.  He cannot do more than he may.  His power is limited; else ill enough would he work, the miscreant.”

“But,” said I, “what has all this, terrible as it is, to do with the fright you took at my telling you that I had heard the sound of the broken shoe?  Surely you are not afraid of only a storm?”