water was bursting open the doors of the houses as if they
were cardboard.

"O Keeper of the Key," cried the shepherd boy, "the Seven Sisters are
abroad. I am obeying your command and returning to the swine on the
hills. The despised Sunnach will be in the dreams of many to-night!"

The candle fell from the hand of the Keeper of the Key, and he could be
seen in the moonlight groping for the door-knob, his hand on the figures
of the group of water nymphs. In a moment he gave a low moan and, his
head hanging over his breast, he staggered down the marble steps.
"Alas," cried the guards, "now is the great man broken!" He made for the
drawbridge crying out, "The lid, the lid. Slide it back over the well!"
The guards and servants pressed after him, but not one of them ever got
into the town again. Across the bridge was now pouring a wild rush of
human panic. Carriages, carts, cars, horsemen, mules, donkeys, were
flying from the Seven Sisters laden with men and women and whole
families. Crowds pressed forward on foot. Animals, dogs, cats, pigs,
sheep, cows, came pellmell with them. Drivers stood in their seats
flaying their horses as if driven by madness. The animals rolled their
eyes, snorted steam from their nostrils, strained forward with desperate
zeal. Once or twice the struggling mass jammed, and men fought each
other like beasts. The cries of people being trampled to death broke out
in harrowing protest. For a moment the shepherd boy saw the form of a
priest rise up, bearing aloft the stark outline of a cross, and then he
disappeared.

Over that night of terror was the unnatural brilliance of the swoollen
moon. All this the shepherd boy saw in a few eternal moments. Then he
cried out, "How up! how up! how up!" and immediately the damsel tripped
down the broad staircase of the mansion, dressed in white robes, her
hair loose about her shoulders. Never had she looked so frail and
beautiful, the lily of the valley! The shepherd boy told her what had
come to pass. She cried out for her father. "I am the daughter of the
Keeper of the Key," she said. "I shall stand by his side at the well in
this great hour."

"I am now the master of the town of the Seven Sisters," said the
shepherd boy. "I am the Keeper of the Key." And he held up the secret
key.

The damsel, seeing this, and catching sight of what was taking place at
the drawbridge, fell back in a swoon on the carpet of the hall. The
shepherd boy raised her in his arms