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.' 'You said I could go to sleep for a hollerday, and I did.' 'Don't you speak to your betters like that, young man, or you'll come to the gallows-tree! You didn't sleep all the time, or you wouldn't have been peeping out of that there hole! Now you can go home, and be up here again by breakfast-time.

I be an old man, and there's old men that deserve well of the world; but no I--must rest how I can!' The elder shepherd then lay down inside the hut, and the boy went down the hill to the hamlet where he dwelt.
SECOND NIGHT When the next night drew on the actions of the boy were almost enough to show that he was thinking of the meeting he had witnessed, and of the promise wrung from the lady that she would come there again.