"I could never do that," I said. "I have no power to seduce man or woman. I cannot win souls to heaven or to hell." "But if you received new powers, such as you desire, would you use them to win souls, three souls, to Lucifer?" "Yes," I said with passionate earnestness. "I swear to you that I would." Suddenly the boy's voice laughed. "_Quomodo cecidisti_, Lucifer!" he said. "When thou canst not contrive to capture souls for thyself! But," he added, as if addressing himself once more to me, after this strange ejaculation, "your words have, perhaps, sealed the bond. Who knows? Words that come from the very heart are often deeds. For, as we can never go back from things that we have done, it may be that, sometimes, we can never go back from things that we have said." On the words he moved, and passed so swiftly by me into the twilight down the glen that I never saw his face. I turned instinctively to look after him; and, this was strange, it seemed that the wind at that very moment must have turned with me, blowing from, instead of towards, the mountain. This certainly was so; for the tongues of flame from my fire bent backward on a sudden and leaned after the grey traveller, whose steps died swiftly away among the rocks, and on the shuffling dead wood and leaves of the birches and the oaks. And then there came a singing in my ears, a beating of many drums in my brain. I drooped and sank down by the fire in the mist. My fever came upon me like a giant, and presently Gavin and Doctor Wedderburn, searching in the night, found me in a delirium, and bore me back to Carlounie. II THE SOUL OF DR WEDDERBURN