the horse, that it floats and streams
out behind, like one of those curved clouds, like a comet's tail, far up
in the sky; only the cloud is white, and the hair dark as night. And
they say it will go on growing until the Last Day, when the horse will
falter, and her hair will gather in; and the horse will fall, and the
hair will twist, and twine, and wreathe itself like a mist of threads
about him, and blind him to everything but her. Then the body will rise
up within it, face to face with him, animated by a fiend, who, twining
_her_ arms around him, will drag him down to the bottomless pit."

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