“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 Cæsar of hell.”
“A tribute of souls?”
“Yes. You must bring, they say, the mystic number, three souls to Satan.”
Suddenly I laughed.
“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.