A little way up the course of the burn the dead wood cracked and shuffled under the pressure of descending feet. Again I heard a scattering of the sheep upon the hillside. My hair stirred on my head under my cap, and the noise of the falling water was intolerably loud to me. I wanted to hear plainly, to hear what was coming down to me in the mist. The brush-wood sang nearer. In the heavy and damp air there was the small, sharp report of a branch snapped from a tree. I heard it drop among the ferns close to me. And then in the mist and in the twilight I saw a slim figure standing motionless. It was vague, but less vague than a shadow. It seemed to be a man, or a youth, clad in a grey suit that could scarcely be differentiated from the mist. The flames of my fire, bent by a light breeze that had sprung up, stretched themselves towards it, as if to salute it. And now I could not hear any movement of the sheep; evidently they had gone to a distance. At first, seized with a strange feeling of extreme, almost unutterable fear, I neither moved nor spoke. Then, making a strong effort to regain control of my ordinary faculties, I cried out in the twilight-- "What is that? What is it?" "Only a stranger who has missed his way on the mountain, and wants to go on to Wester Denoon." The voice that came to me from the figure beyond the fire sounded, I remember, quite young, like the voice of a boy. It was clear and level, and perhaps a little formal. So that was all. A tourist--that was all! "Can you direct me on the way?" the voice said. I gave the required direction slowly, for I was still confused, nervous, exhausted with my insane practices in the den. But the youth--as I supposed he was--did not move away at once. "What are you doing by this fire?" he said. "I heard your voice calling by the torrent among the trees when I was a very long way off." Strangely, I did not resent the question. Still more strangely, I was impelled to give him the true answer to it. "Raising the Devil!" he said. "And did he come to you?" "No; of course not. You must think me mad." "And why do you call him?" Suddenly a desire to confide in this stranger, whose face I could not see now, whose shadowy form I should, in all probability, never see again, came upon me. My usual nervousness deserted me. I let loose my heart in a turbulent crowd of words. I explained my impotence of body and of mind to this grey traveller in the twilight. I dwelt upon my misery. I repeated the cry of the burn and related my insane dream of imitating Faust, of making my poor pact with Lucifer, with the Sphinx of mediaeval terrors. When I ceased, the boy's voice answered:-- "They say that in these modern days Satan has grown exigent. It is not enough to dedicate to him your own soul; but you must also pay a tribute of souls to the Caesar of hell." "A tribute of souls?" "Yes. You must bring, they say, the mystic number, three souls to Satan." Suddenly I laughed.