s, and when he had
watched her out of sight, he turned and strode off in the opposite
direction. All then was silent and empty as before.

Yet it was only for a moment. When they had quite departed, another
shape appeared upon the scene. He came from behind the trilithon. He
was a man of stouter build than the first, and wore the boots and spurs
of a horseman. Two things were at once obvious from this phenomenon:
that he had watched the interview between the Captain and the Duchess;
and that, though he probably had seen every movement of the couple,
including the embrace, he had been too remote to hear the reluctant words
of the lady's conversation--or, indeed, any words at all--so that the
meeting must have exhibited itself to his eye as the assignation of a
pair of well-agreed lovers. But it was necessary that several years
should elapse before the shepherd-boy was old enough to reason out this.

The third individual stood still for a moment, as if deep in meditation.
He crossed over to where the lady and gentleman had stood, and looked at
the ground; then he too turned and went away in a third direction, as
widely divergent as possible from those taken by the two interlocutors.
His course was towards the highway; and a few minutes afterwards the trot
of a horse might have been heard upon its frosty surface, lessening till
it died away upon the ear.

The boy remained in the hut, confronting the trilithon as if he expected
yet more actors on the scene, but nobody else appeared. How long he
stood with his little face against the loophole he hardly knew; but he
was rudely awakened from his reverie by a punch in his back, and in the
feel of it he familiarly recognized the stem of the old shepherd's crook.

'Blame thy young eyes and limbs, Bill Mills--now you have let the fire
out, and you know I want it kept in! I thought something would go wrong
with 'ee up here, and I couldn't bide in bed no more than thistledown on
the wind, that I could not! Well, what's happened, fie upon 'ee?'

'Nothing.'

'Ewes all as I left 'em?'

'Yes.'

'Any lambs want bringing in?'

'No.'

The shepherd relit the fire, and went out among the sheep with a lantern,
for the moon was getting low. Soon he came in again.

'Blame it all--thou'st say that nothing have happened; when one ewe have
twinned and is like to go off, and another is dying for want of half an
eye of looking to! I told 'ee, Bill Mills, if anything went wron