I stood still, waiting for the next flash, that I might be quite sure of the way I was about to take before I ventured to move.  While I stood, I fancied I heard a single hollow plunge in the black water far below.  When the lightning came, I turned, and took my path in another direction.  After walking for some time across the heath, I fell.  The fall became a roll, and down a steep declivity I went, over and over, arriving at the bottom uninjured.

Another flash soon showed me where I was—­in the hollow valley, within a couple of hundred yards from nurse’s cottage.  I made my way towards it.  There was no light in it, except the feeblest glow from the embers of her peat fire.  “She is in bed,” I said to myself, “and I will not disturb her.”  Yet something drew me towards the little window.  I looked in.  At first I could see nothing.  At length, as I kept gazing, I saw something, indistinct in the darkness, like an outstretched human form.

By this time the storm had lulled.  The moon had been up for some time, but had been quite concealed by tempestuous clouds.  Now, however, these had begun to break up; and, while I stood looking into the cottage, they scattered away from the face of the moon, and a faint, vapoury gleam of her light, entering the cottage through a window opposite that at which I stood, fell directly on the face of my old nurse, as she lay on her back outstretched upon chairs, pale as death, and with her eyes closed.  The light fell nowhere but on her face.  A stranger to her habits would have thought that she was dead; but she had so much of the appearance she had had on a former occasion, that I concluded at once she was in one of her trances.  But having often heard that persons in such a condition ought not to be disturbed, and feeling quite sure she knew best how to manage herself, I turned, though reluctantly, and left the lone cottage behind me in the night, with the death-like woman lying motionless in the midst of it.

I found my way home without any further difficulty, and went to bed, where I soon fell asleep, thoroughly wearied, more by the mental excitement I had been experiencing, than by the amount of bodily exercise I had gone through.

My sleep was tormented with awful dreams; yet, strange to say, I awoke in the morning refreshed and fearless.  The sun was shining through the chinks in my shutters, which had been closed because of the storm, and was making streaks and bands of golden brilliancy upon the wall.  I had dressed and completed my preparations long before I heard the steps of the servant who came to call me.