The Portent

Duncan Campbell grows up in the Scottish Highlands with a gift his family both fears and hides, the second sight, an inner vision that shows him things others cannot see. A recurring vision of a phantom horse and the sound of ghostly hoofbeats shadows him from boyhood, and when he leaves home as a tutor he falls in love with the troubled Lady Alice, whose fate seems bound up with an old family curse. MacDonald draws on Highland folklore and the era’s fascination with mesmerism to build a short, atmospheric tale of doomed love and things half glimpsed. Quieter and darker than his fairy tales, it shows his gift for unease. Download the free PDF and EPUB edition.