Portent and Other Stories, The | Page 8

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 around this little valley, just on the top edge--all round;
the lady's hair and the horses 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?"
"No, my boy; I fear no storm. But the fact is, that that sound is seldom
heard, and never, as far as I know, by any of the blood of that wicked
man, without betokening some ill to one of the family, and most
probably to the one who hears it--but I am not quite sure about that.
Only some evil it does portend, although a long time may elapse before
it shows itself; and I have a hope it may mean some one else than you."
"Do not wish that," I replied. "I know no one better able to bear it than I
am; and I hope, whatever it may be, that I only shall have to meet it. It
must surely be something serious to be so foretold--it can hardly be
connected with my disappointment in being compelled to be a
pedagogue instead of a soldier."
"Do not trouble yourself about that, Duncan," replied she. "A soldier
you must be. The same day you told me of the clank of the broken
horseshoe, I saw you return wounded from battle, and fall fainting from
your horse in the street of a great city--only fainting, thank God. But I
have particular reasons for being uneasy at your hearing that boding
sound. Can you tell me the day and hour of your birth?"
"No," I replied. "It seems very odd when I think of it, but I really do not
know even the day."
"Nor any one else; which is stranger still," she answered.
"How does that happen, nurse?"
"We were in terrible anxiety about your mother at the time. So ill was
she, after you were just born, in a strange, unaccountable way, that you
lay almost neglected for more than an hour. In the very act of giving
birth to you, she seemed to the rest around her to be out of her mind, so
wildly did she talk; but