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
fancied I heard a single hollow plunge in the black water far below.
When the lightning came, I turned, and took my path in another
direction. After walking for some time across the heath, I fell. The
fall became a roll, and down a steep declivity I went, over and over,
arriving at the bottom uninjured.

Another flash soon showed me where I was--in the hollow valley, within a
couple of hundred yards from nurse's cottage. I made my way towards it.
There was no light in it, except the feeblest glow from the embers of
her peat fire. "She is in bed," I said to myself, "and I will not
disturb her." Yet something drew me towards the little window. I looked
in. At first I could see nothing. At length, as I kept gazing, I saw
something, indistinct in the darkness, like an outstretched human form.

By this time the storm had lulled. The moon had been up for some time,
but had been quite concealed by tempestuous clouds. Now, however, these
had begun to break up; and, while I stood looking into the cottage, they
scattered away from the face of the moon, and a faint, vapoury gleam of
her light, entering the cottage through a window opposite that at which
I stood, fell directly on the face of my old nurse, as she lay on her
back outstretched upon chairs, pale as death, and with her eyes closed.
The light fell nowhere but on her face. A stranger to her habits would
have thought that she was dead; but she had so much of the appearance