‘What to do?’

’Stop his tongue for four-and-twenty years—­till I am dead at ninety-four, like the shepherd.’

’Your Grace—­while you impose silence on me, I will not speak, even though nay neck should pay the penalty.  I promised to be yours, and I am yours.  But is this persistence of any avail?’

‘I’ll stop his tongue, I say!’ cried the Duke with some of his old rugged force.  ‘Now, you go home to bed, Mills, and leave me to manage him.’

The interview ended, and the steward withdrew.  The night, as he had said, was just such an one as the night of twenty-two years before, and the events of the evening destroyed in him all regard for the season as one of cheerfulness and goodwill.  He went off to his own house on the further verge of the park, where he led a lonely life, scarcely calling any man friend.  At eleven he prepared to retire to bed—­but did not retire.  He sat down and reflected.  Twelve o’clock struck; he looked out at the colourless moon, and, prompted by he knew not what, put on his hat and emerged into the air.  Here William Mills strolled on and on, till he reached the top of Marlbury Downs, a spot he had not visited at this hour of the night during the whole score-and-odd years.

He placed himself, as nearly as he could guess, on the spot where the shepherd’s hut had stood.  No lambing was in progress there now, and the old shepherd who had used him so roughly had ceased from his labours that very day.  But the trilithon stood up white as ever; and, crossing the intervening sward, the steward fancifully placed his mouth against the stone.  Restless and self-reproachful as he was, he could not resist a smile as he thought of the terrifying oath of compact, sealed by a kiss upon the stones of a Pagan temple.  But he had kept his word, rather as a promise than as a formal vow, with much worldly advantage to himself, though not much happiness; till increase of years had bred reactionary feelings which led him to receive the news of to-night with emotions akin to relief.

While leaning against the Devil’s Door and thinking on these things, he became conscious that he was not the only inhabitant of the down.  A figure in white was moving across his front with long, noiseless strides.  Mills stood motionless, and when the form drew quite near he perceived it to be that of the Duke himself in his nightshirt—­apparently walking in his sleep.  Not to alarm the old man, Mills clung close to the shadow of the stone.  The Duke went straight on into the hollow.  There he knelt down, and began scratching the earth with his hands like a badger.  After a few minutes he arose, sighed heavily, and retraced his steps as he had come.

Fearing that he might harm himself, yet unwilling to arouse him, the steward followed noiselessly.  The Duke kept on his path unerringly, entered the park, and made for the house, where he let himself in by a window that stood open—­the one probably by which he had come out.  Mills softly closed the window behind his patron, and then retired homeward to await the revelations of the morning, deeming it unnecessary to alarm the house.