“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.