‘Yes—­I own them both,’ she answered faintly.  ’But owning such as that tells against me; and I swear the inference is not true.’

’Don’t say that; for you have come—­let me think the reason of your coming what I like to think it.  It can do you no harm.  Come once more!’

He still held her hand and waist.  ‘Very well, then,’ she said.  ’Thus far you shall persuade me.  I will meet you to-morrow night or the night after.  Now, let me go.’

He released her, and they parted.  The Duchess ran rapidly down the hill towards the outlying mansion of Shakeforest Towers, 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 wrong to come down and call me; and this is how you have done it.’