Nurse ceased, trembling as if overcome by the recollection; and I was too much moved and awed to speak. At length, resuming the conversation, she said: “You see it is no wonder, Duncan, my dear, if, after all this, I should find, when I wanted to fix the date of your birth, that I could not determine the day or the hour when it took place. All was confusion in my poor brain. But it was strange that no one else could, any more than I. One thing only I can tell you about it. As I carried you across the room to lay you down, for I assisted at your birth, I happened to look up to the window, and then saw what I did not forget, although I did not think of it again till many days after,—that a bright star shone within the half-circle of the thin crescent moon.”
“Oh, then,” said I, “it will be quite easy to determine the exact day and the very hour when my birth took place.”
“See the good of book-learning,” replied she. “When you work it out, just let me know, my dear, that I may remember it.”
“That I will.”
A silence of some moments followed. Margaret resumed:
“I am afraid you will laugh at my foolish fancies, Duncan; but in thinking over all these things, as you may suppose I often do, lying awake in my lonely bed, the notion sometimes comes to me: What if my Duncan be the spirit of the youth whom his wicked brother hurled into the ravine, come again in a new body to live out yet his life on the earth, cut short by his brother’s hatred? If so, then his persecution of you, and of your mother for your sake, would be easily understood. And if so, you will never be able to rest till you find your mate, wherever she may have been born on the face of the wide earth. For born she must be, long ere now, for you to find. I misdoubt me much, however, should this be the case, whether 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 very peculiarly moved by her narrative. Few more words were spoken on either side.
After receiving renewed exhortations to carefulness on my 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 nurse’s vision and consequent prophecy. I went home in the full ecstasy of the storm, through 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 filled it all.
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 moral as well as physical mistakes, is how we came to go wrong. But after wandering for some time, plunged in meditation, and with no warnings whatever of the presence of inimical powers, a most brilliant lightning-flash showed me that at least I was not near home. The flash was prolonged by a slight electric pulsation, which continued for a second or two; 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 direction I was taking before I dared to move. While I stood, I fancied that I heard a single hollow plunge in the black water far below. When the lightning came, I turned, and took my way back. After walking for some time across the heath, I stumbled, and to my horror found I was falling. The fall soon became a roll, however, and down a steep declivity I went, over and over, arriving at the bottom uninjured.