"Then I wish to hear no more about it."

"Oh -- Mills?" he said. "Sit down. What is it?"

He stood up and left the office, and went to a room in another part of the house, where he knocked, and entered. The Duchess had been dead for some years, and the Duke was now a thin old man with white hair.

On a winter evening many years later, a well-dressed man of business sat in his office at Shakeforest Towers. He had come a long way from the shepherd boy that he once was, but he did not seem happy with his comfortable life. He appeared older than his age, and he looked about him restlessly.

"Old times have come to life again, your Grace."

"Which old times are they?"

"That Christmas week twenty-two years ago, when the Duchess's cousin asked her to meet him on Marlbury Downs. I saw the meeting, and I saw much more than that."

"I do. That boy has kept the promise all his life."

"Do you remember a promise made by a shepherd boy?"

"Very well. But the secret may soon come out. Not from me, because I'm grateful for what you've done for me. There was great excitement when Captain Ogbourne disappeared, but I spoke not a word, and his body was never found. For twenty-two years I've wondered what you did with him. Now I know. This afternoon I went up on the hill, and did some digging. I saw enough to know that something still lies there in a hole behind the stones."

"What will you do, your Grace?"

"And I'm only seventy. I have twenty-four more years!"

"What made you think of going there this afternoon?"

"Dead at last -- how old was he?"

"She never did, I'm sure, to the day of her death."

"Ah!" said the Duke, looking fixedly at Mills. "Go on!"

"That's enough, Mills. I'll see the vicar early tomorrow."

"Stop his tongue for twenty-four years, until I am dead at ninety-four, like the old shepherd. Go home now, Mills."

"He was my master when I was a shepherd boy, your Grace. And he was on the hill the second night. He was there all the time, but none of us knew that."

"Something that happened today, your Grace. The oldest man in the village has died -- the old shepherd."

"Ninety-four."

"When I heard he was dying, it made me think of the past, and that's why I went up on the hills. Now the villagers are saying that before he died, he confessed a secret to the vicar -- a secret that he'd kept for your Grace, about a crime on Marlbury Downs more than twenty years ago."

"Mills, do you think the Duchess guessed?"

Mills left the room and walked to his own house, where he lived a lonely, friendless life. But he could not sleep, and at midnight he looked out at the colourless moon, and decided to walk up to Marlbury Downs again. Once on the hill, he placed himself where the shepherd's hut had stood. No sheep or lambs were there that winter, but the Devil's Door stood high and white as ever, with dark shadows behind it.

The next morning, when Mills arrived at the great house, the housekeeper came to the door to meet him.

"Oh, sir," she said, "the Duke is dead! He left his room in the night and went walking around somewhere. And on his way back to his room, he fell downstairs and broke his neck."

Suddenly he realized he was not alone. A figure in white was moving silently towards the stones. It was the Duke himself, in his long nightshirt, walking in his sleep. He went straight to the covered hole, and dug with his hands like an animal. Then he got up, sighed, and went back down the hill. Mills followed him and saw him enter Shakeforest Towers.

There are still fine sheep and lambs on the Marlbury Downs, but shepherds do not like spending the nights close to the Devil's Door. They say that during Christmas week ghostly white shapes are often seen there. Something made of bright metal shines in the moonlight, and there is the shadow of a man pulling something heavy across the grass. But no one can be sure that these things are true.

At last Mills was able to tell the secret that had lain so heavily on his heart for twenty-two years, and he died, at peace with himself, a few years later.