“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 I knew better.  I knew that she was fighting some evil power; and what power it was, I knew full well; for twice, during her pains, I heard the click of the horseshoe.  But no one could help her.  After her delivery, she lay as if in a trance, neither dead, nor at rest, but as if frozen to ice, and conscious of it all the while.  Once more I heard the terrible sound of iron; and, at the moment your mother started from her trance, screaming, ‘My child! my child!’ We suddenly became aware that no one had attended to the child, and rushed to the place where he lay wrapped in a blanket.  Uncovering him, we found him black in the face, and spotted with dark spots upon the throat.  I thought he was dead; but, with great and almost hopeless pains, we succeeded in making him breathe, and he gradually recovered.  But his mother continued dreadfully exhausted.  It seemed as if she had spent her life for her child’s defence and birth.  That was you, Duncan, my dear.