ly place,' resumed the Duke. 'An altar stood
here, erected to a venerable family of gods, who were known and talked of
long before the God 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 principalities 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 passage 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 ne