been born on the face of the
earth. For born she must be, long ere now, for you to find. I misdoubt
me much, however, if you will find her without great conflict and
suffering between, for the Powers of Darkness will be against you;
though I have good hope that you will overcome at last. You must forgive
the fancies of a foolish old woman, my dear."

I will not try to describe the strange feelings, almost sensations, that
arose in me while listening to these extraordinary utterances, lest it
should be supposed I was ready to believe all that Margaret narrated or
concluded. I could not help doubting her sanity; but no more could I
help feeling peculiarly moved by her narrative.

Few more words were spoken on either side, but, after receiving renewed
exhortations to carefulness on the way home, I said good-bye to dear old
nurse, considerably comforted, I must confess, that I was not doomed to
be a tutor all my days; for I never questioned the truth of that vision
and its consequent prophecy.

I went out into the midst of the storm, into the alternating throbs of
blackness and radiance; now the possessor of no more room than what my
body filled, and now isolated in world-wide space. And the thunder
seemed to follow me, bellowing after me as I went.

Absorbed in the story I had heard, I took my way, as I thought,
homewards. The whole country was well known to me. I should have said,
before that night, that I could have gone home blindfold. Whether the
lightning bewildered me and made me take a false turn, I cannot tell,
for the hardest thing to understand, in intellectual as well as moral
mistakes, is how we came to go wrong. But after wandering for some time,
plunged in meditation, and with no warning whatever of the presence of
inimical powers, a brilliant lightning-flash showed me that at least I
was not near home. The light was prolonged for a second or two by a
slight electric pulsation; and by that I distinguished a wide space of
blackness on the ground in front of me. Once more wrapt in the folds of
a thick darkness, I dared not move. Suddenly it occurred to me what the
blackness was, and whither I had wandered. It was a huge quarry, of
great depth, long disused, and half filled with water. I knew the place
perfectly. A few more steps would have carried me over the brink. 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