"Eh, you're not getting any great secret here, but I've got a fire going over yonder if you want to sit down while we talk." He jerks his thumb back at the other shepherds, clustered around a bubbling pot and talking trade with one another, and leads you over, squatting down amongst the other shepherds with his mug between his knees.
"When I was younger, I used to wander the heath and woods round here. Got so I know the area better than most, even more than most shepherds would. About oh, twenty years ago now maybe, I was roving about a day and a half's walk north-west of here. Up at the edge of the wood, where there's a swell and then a drop with a little brook in it...
There's an old pagan temple there, you see. Don't know how old, but old. The trees have all overgrown it and it was half-buried, and I doubt it's got any prettier since."
He pauses and quaffs the last dregs of his shandy, smacking his lips in delight before continuing with his tale.
"No one around here will go near the place, because they claim it's haunted or inhabited by some fell beast or somesuch. I didn't see any fell beasts, but there was a queer air to it, something not quite right. And there was something moving down in those ruins. There were snapped branches around and I thought I heard a man walking around in the bushes. I figured it for a robber and crept away. Never had reason to be up that way since, find out what it really was.
But," he says and jabs the air with his walking stick for emphasis, "I did see one thing that might interest you. A silver chalice, big as a man's forearm, sitting in one of the windows. Had the robber not frightened me, I'd've made off with it, I think. Not that I'm a thief, but it was clearly the property of some long dead pagan witch, and free for anyone who could lay hands upon it.
So far as I know, it's still there. It was covered in dust and tarnish when I saw it - looked as if it had lain there for years and years without anyone ever touching it. Somehow I don't think that robber took it, if a robber it was."