the topmost crags of the towering mountain peaks. There are some who,
from time to time, see the doomed man careering along the face of the
mountain, with the lady hanging across the steed; and they say it always
betokens a storm, such as this which is now raving about us."

I had not noticed till now, so absorbed had I been in her tale, that the
storm had risen to a very ecstasy of fury.

"They say, likewise, that the lady's hair is still growing; for, every
time they see her, it is longer than before; and that now such is its
length and the headlong speed of 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