Come here.' He took the boy across to the trilithon, and made him kneel down.
'Now, this was once a holy 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.