There was a short description of how, on the coming of age of his two sons, they each chose to be associated with the bargain he had made in the shepherd’s hut, and indeed, from the few details given about their characters and their escapades, the choice could not have been a matter of much difficulty to these young gentlemen. The younger, in especial, attached to the Court of his Majesty King James, seemed to have been as perfect and appalling a young rogue as even his father could have wished. Then there followed the entry that to-day was the author’s sixty-ninth birthday, and, thanks to the ever-constant goodness of his Lord and Benefactor, his health and strength were still unabated, and the pleasures of his youth still his. He blessed the day, now fifty-one years ago, when he had chosen so wisely and well, as the parchment, now preserved in his strong-room, testified, “How would I rejoice,” he wrote, “to build some shrine in honour of my Lord, where I would worship him who has wrought so great benefits upon me, some sanctuary, where I might worthily adore him”--and then suddenly in the middle of a sentence the Memoirs came to an end. Colin put down the last sheet of the manuscript, and leaned back in his chair. He felt as if, Narcissus-like, he had all the morning been regarding himself as shewn in this Elizabethan mirror of his ancestor’s confessions. It was his own spirit so undeviatingly reflected there, and the contemplation of it was an act of self-recognition. All that he had read was a three hundred year old portrait of himself, even as he might have sat for the great picture in the hall, into the frame of which was now inserted the signed parchment of the bargain. Whatever was the literal and the material truth about that (his ancestor, clearly, who might be expected to know, confirmed it) there could be none about its spiritual authenticity. No-one who had seen the Memoirs could possibly have any doubt about that, and Colin knew that he, like most others of his race, eagerly associated himself with the bargain. He knew, too, that his choice was solid and real and no fantastic imagining; there was God on one side, there was Satan on the other. He had rejected God, and, not only for the benefits attached, but because he preferred evil to good, he had chosen Satan. Hate and evil were dear to him, he had no use for love.