Wondering what they would do, the young shepherd left the hut, and doubled behind the belt of furze, intending to stand near the trilithon unperceived. But, in crossing the few yards of open ground he was for a moment exposed to view.
"Ah, I see him at last!" said the d.u.c.h.ess.
"See him!" said the Duke. "Where?"
"By the Devil"s Door; don"t you notice a figure there? Ah, my poor lover- cousin, won"t you catch it now?" And she laughed half-pityingly. "But what"s the matter?" she asked, turning to her husband.
"It is not he!" said the Duke hoa.r.s.ely. "It can"t be he!"
"No, it is not he. It is too small for him. It is a boy."
"Ah, I thought so! Boy, come here."
The youthful shepherd advanced with apprehension.
"What are you doing here?"
"Keeping sheep, your Grace."
"Ah, you know me! Do you keep sheep here every night?"
"Off and on, my Lord Duke."
"And what have you seen here to-night or last night?" inquired the d.u.c.h.ess. "Any person waiting or walking about?"
The boy was silent.
"He has seen nothing," interrupted her husband, his eyes so forbiddingly fixed on the boy that they seemed to shine like points of fire. "Come, let us go. The air is too keen to stand in long."
When they were gone the boy retreated to the hut and sheep, less fearful now than at first--familiarity with the situation having gradually overpowered his thoughts of the buried man. But he was not to be left alone long. When an interval had elapsed of about sufficient length for walking to and from Shakeforest Towers, there appeared from that direction the heavy form of the Duke. He now came alone.
The n.o.bleman, on his part, seemed to have eyes no less sharp than the boy"s, for he instantly recognized the latter among the ewes, and came straight towards him.
"Are you the shepherd lad I spoke to a short time ago?"
"I be, my Lord Duke."
"Now listen to me. Her Grace asked you what you had seen this last night or two up here, and you made no reply. I now ask the same thing, and you need not be afraid to answer. Have you seen anything strange these nights you have been watching here?"
"My Lord Duke, I be a poor heedless boy, and what I see I don"t bear in mind."
"I ask you again," said the Duke, coming nearer, "have you seen anything strange these nights you have been watching here?"
"O, my Lord Duke! I be but the under-shepherd boy, and my father he was but your humble Grace"s hedger, and my mother only the cinder-woman in the back-yard! I fall asleep when left alone, and I see nothing at all!"
The Duke grasped the boy by the shoulder, and, directly impending over him, stared down into his face, "Did you see anything strange done here last night, I say?"
"O, my Lord Duke, have mercy, and don"t stab me!" cried the shepherd, falling on his knees. "I have never seen you walking here, or riding here, or lying-in-wait for a man, or dragging a heavy load!"
"H"m!" said his interrogator, grimly, relaxing his hold. "It is well to know that you have never seen those things. Now, which would you rather--see me do those things now, or keep a secret all your life?"
"Keep a secret, my Lord Duke!"
"Sure you are able?"
"O, your Grace, try me!"
"Very well. And now, how do you like sheep-keeping?"
"Not at all. "Tis lonely work for them that think of spirits, and I"m badly used."
"I believe you. You are too young for it. I must do something to make you more comfortable. You shall change this smock-frock for a real cloth jacket, and your thick boots for polished shoes. And you shall be taught what you have never yet heard of; and be put to school, and have bats and b.a.l.l.s for the holidays, and be made a man of. But you must never say you have been a shepherd boy, and watched on the hills at night, for shepherd boys are not liked in good company.
"Trust me, my Lord Duke."
"The very moment you forget yourself, and speak of your shepherd days--this year, next year, in school, out of school, or riding in your carriage twenty years hence--at that moment my help will be withdrawn, and smash down you come to shepherding forthwith. You have parents, I think you say?"
"A widowed mother only, my Lord Duke."
"I"ll provide for her, and make a comfortable woman of her, until you speak of--what?"
"Of my shepherd days, and what I saw here."
"Good. If you do speak of it?"
"Smash down she comes to widowing forthwith!"
"That"s well--very well. But it"s not enough. Come here." He took the boy across to the trilithon, and made him kneel down.
"Now, this was once a holy place," resumed the Duke. "An altar stood here, erected to a venerable family of G.o.ds, who were known and talked of long before the G.o.d we know now. So that an oath sworn here is doubly an oath. Say this after me: "May all the host above--angels and archangels, and princ.i.p.alities and powers--punish me; may I be tormented wherever I am--in the house or in the garden, in the fields or in the roads, in church or in chapel, at home or abroad, on land or at sea; may I be afflicted in eating and in drinking, in growing up and in growing old, in living and dying, inwardly and outwardly, and for always, if I ever speak of my life as a shepherd boy, or of what I have seen done on this Marlbury Down. So be it, and so let it be. Amen and amen." Now kiss the stone."
The trembling boy repeated the words, and kissed the stone, as desired.
The Duke led him off by the hand. That night the junior shepherd slept in Shakeforest Towers, and the next day he was sent away for tuition to a remote village. Thence he went to a preparatory establishment, and in due course to a public school.
FOURTH NIGHT
On a winter evening many years subsequent to the above-mentioned occurrences, the ci-devant shepherd sat in a well-furnished office in the north wing of Shakeforest Towers in the guise of an ordinary educated man of business. He appeared at this time as a person of thirty-eight or forty, though actually he was several years younger. A worn and restless glance of the eye now and then, when he lifted his head to search for some letter or paper which had been mislaid, seemed to denote that his was not a mind so thoroughly at ease as his surroundings might have led an observer to expect.
His pallor, too, was remarkable for a countryman. He was professedly engaged in writing, but he shaped not word. He had sat there only a few minutes, when, laying down his pen and pushing back his chair, he rested a hand uneasily on each of the chair-arms and looked on the floor.
Soon he arose and left the room. His course was along a pa.s.sage which ended in a central octagonal hall; crossing this he knocked at a door. A faint, though deep, voice told him to come in. The room he entered was the library, and it was tenanted by a single person only--his patron the Duke.
During this long interval of years the Duke had lost all his heaviness of build. He was, indeed, almost a skeleton; his white hair was thin, and his hands were nearly transparent. "Oh--Mills?" he murmured. "Sit down.
What is it?"