Chapter 2: The Inmates Of Trevlyn Chase.
Chapter 3: The Lost Treasure.
Chapter 4: A Night On Hammerton Heath.
Chapter 5: The House On The Bridge.
Chapter 6: Martin Holt's Supper Party.
Chapter 7: The Life Of A Great City.
Chapter 8: Cuthbert And Cherry Go Visiting.
Chapter 9: The Wise Woman.
Chapter 10: The Hunted Priest.
Chapter 11: The Lone House On The River.
Chapter 12: May Day In The Forest.
Chapter 13: The Gipsy's Tryst.
Chapter 14: Long Robin.
Chapter 15: Petronella.
Chapter 16: The Pixies' Dell.
Chapter 17: Brother And Sister.
Chapter 18: "Saucy Kate."
Chapter 19: The Cross Way House.
Chapter 20: How It Fared With Cherry.
Chapter 21: The Gipsy's Warning.
Chapter 22: Whispers Abroad.
Chapter 23: Peril For Trevlyn.
Chapter 24: Kate's Courage.
Chapter 25: "On The Dark Flowing River."
Chapter 26: Jacob's Devotion.
Chapter 27: Yuletide At The Cross Way House.
Chapter 1: The Inmates Of The Old Gate House.
"Dost defy me to my face, sirrah?"
"I have no desire to defy you, father, but--"
"But me no 'buts,' and father me no 'fathers,'" stormed the angry
old man, probably quite unconscious of the Shakespearian smack of
his phrase; "I am no father to heretic spawn--a plague and a curse
be on all such! Go to, thou wicked and deceitful boy; thou wilt one
day bitterly rue thy evil practices. Thinkest thou that I will
harbour beneath my roof one who sets me at open defiance; one who
is a traitor to his house and to his faith?"
A dark flush had risen in the face of the tall, slight youth, with
the thoughtful brow and resolute mouth, as his father's first words
fell upon his ears, and throwing back his head with a haughty
gesture, he said: "I am not deceitful. You have no call to taunt me
with that vice which I despise above all others. I have never used
deceit towards you. How could you have known I had this day
attended the service of the Established Church had I not told you
so myself?"
The veins on the old man's forehead stood out with anger; he
brought his fist heavily down on the table, with a bang that caused
every vessel thereon to ring. A dark-eyed girl, who was listening
in mute terror to the stormy scene, shrank yet more into herself at
this, and cast an imploring look upon the tall stripling whose face
her own so much resembled; but his fiery eyes were on his father's
face, and he neither saw nor heeded the look.
"And have I not forbid--ay, and that under the heaviest
penalties--any child of mine from so much as putting the head
inside one of those vile heretic buildings? Would God they were
every one of them destroyed! Heaven send some speedy judgment upon
those who build and those who dare to worship therein! What wonder
that a son turns in defiance upon his father, when he stuffs his
ears with the pestilent heresies with which the wicked are making
vile this earth!"
Nicholas Trevlyn's anger became so great at this point as well nigh
to choke him. He paused, not from lack of words, but from inability
to utter them; and his son, boldly taking advantage of the pause,
struck in once more in his own defence.
"Father, you talk of pestilent heresies, but what know you of the
doctrines taught within walls you never enter? Is it a pestilent
heresy that Christ died to save the world; that He rose again for
our justification; that He sent the Holy Spirit into the world to
sanctify and gather together a Church called after His name? That
is the doctrine I heard preached today, and methinks it were hard
to fall foul of it. If you had heard it yourself from one of our
priests, sure you would have found it nothing amiss."
"Silence, boy!" thundered the old man, his fury suddenly changing
to a white heat of passion, which was more terrible than the
bluster that had gone before. "Silence, lest I strike thee to the
ground where thou standest, and plunge this dagger in thine heart
sooner than hear thee blaspheme the Holy Church in which thou wast
reared! How darest thou talk thus to me? as though yon accursed
heretic of a Protestant was a member of the Church of Christ. Thou
knowest that there is but one fold under one shepherd, and he the
Pope of Rome. A plague upon those accursed ones who have perverted
the true faith and led a whole nation astray! But they shall not
lead my son after them; Nicholas Trevlyn will look well to that!"
Father and son stood with the table between them, gazing fixedly at
one another like combatants who, having tested somewhat the
strength each of the other, feel a certain doubt as to the
termination of the contest, but are both ready and almost eager for
the final struggle which shall leave the victory unequivocally on
one side or the other.
"I had thought that the Shepherd was Christ," said Cuthbert, in a
low, firm tone, "and that the fold was wide enough to embrace all
those baptized into His name."
"Then thou only thinkest what is one more of those damnable
heresies which are ruining this land and corrupting the whole
world," cried Nicholas between his shut teeth. "Thou hast learned
none such vile doctrine from me."
"I have learned no doctrine from you save that the Pope is lord of
all----of things temporal and things spiritual--and that all who
deny this are in peril of hell fire," answered the young man, with
no small bitterness and scorn. "And here, in this realm, those who
hold this to be so are in danger of prison and death. Truly this is
a happy state of things for one such as I. At home a father who
rails upon me night and day for a heretic--albeit I vow I hold not
one single doctrine which I cannot stand to and prove from the Word
of God."
"Which thou hast no call to have in thine hands!" shouted his
father; "a book which, if given to the people, stirs up everywhere
the vilest heresies and most loathsome errors. The Bible is God's
gift to the Church. It is not of private interpretation. It is for
the priests to give of its treasures to the people as they are able
to bear them."
"Ay, verily, and what are the people to do when the priests deny
them their rightful food?" cried Cuthbert, as hotly as his father.
"Listen to me, sir. Yes, this once I wilt speak! In years gone by,
when, however quietly, secretly, and privately, we were visited by
a priest and heard the mass, and received at his hands the Blessed
Sacrament, did I revolt against your wish in matters spiritual? Was
I not ever willing to please you? Did I not love the Church? Was
not I approved of the Father, and taught many things by him,
including those arts of reading and penmanship which many in my
condition of life never attain unto? Did I ever anger you by
disobedience or revolt?"
"What of that, since you are doing so now?" questioned Nicholas in
a quieter tone, yet one full of suspicion and resentment. "What use
to talk of what is past and gone? Thou knowest well of late years
how thou hast been hankering after every vile and villainous heresy
that has come in thy way. It is thy mother's blood within thee
belike. I did grievous wrong ever to wed with one reared a
Protestant, however she might abjure the errors in which she was
brought up. False son of a false mother--"
"Hold, sir! You shall not miscall my mother! No son will stand by
and hear that!"
"I will say what I will in mine own house, thou evil, malapert
boy!" roared the old man. "I tell thee that thy mother was a false
woman, that she deceived me bitterly. After solemnly abjuring the
errors in which she had been reared, and being received into the
true fold, she, as years went by, lapsed more and more into her
foul heretical ways of thought and speech; and though she went to
her last reckoning (unshriven and unassoiled, for she would have no
priest at her dying bed) before ye twain were old enough to have
been corrupted by her precept and example, ye must have sucked in
heresy with your mother's milk, else how could son of mine act in
the vile fashion that thou art acting?"
"I am acting in no vile fashion. I am no heretic. I am a true son
of the true Church."
Cuthbert spoke with a forced calmness which gave his words weight,
and for a moment even the angry man paused to listen to them, eying
the youth keenly all the while, as though measuring his own
strength against him. Physically he was far more than a match for
the slightly-built stripling of one-and-twenty, being a man of
great height and muscular power--power that had in no wise
diminished with advancing years, though time had turned his black
locks to iron gray, and seamed his face with a multitude of
wrinkles. Pride, passion, gloomy defiance, and bitter hatred of his
kind seemed written on that face, which in its youth must have been
handsome enough. Nicholas Trevlyn was a disappointed, embittered
man, who added to all other faults of temperament that of a
hopeless bigot of the worst kind. He was the sort of man of whom
Inquisitors must surely have been made--without pity, without
remorse, without any kind of natural feeling when once their
religious convictions were at stake.
As a young man he had watched heretics burning in Smithfield with a
fierce joy and delight; and when with the accession of Elizabeth
the tide had turned, he had submitted without a murmur to the fines
which had ruined him and driven him, a poverty-stricken dependent,
to the old Gate House. He would have died a martyr with the grim
constancy that he had seen in others, and never lamented what he
suffered for conscience' sake. But he had grown to be a thoroughly
soured and embittered man, and had spent the past twenty or more
years of his life in a ceaseless savage brooding which had made his
abode anything but a happy place for his two children, the
offspring of a late and rather peculiar marriage with a woman by
birth considerably his inferior.
The firmness without the bitterness of his father's face was
reflected in that of the son as Cuthbert fearlessly finished his
speech.
"I am a true son of the Church. I am no outcast--no heretic. But I
will not suffer my soul to be starved. It is the law of this land
that whatever creed men hold in their hearts--whether the tenets of
Rome or those of the Puritans of Scotland--that they shall
outwardly conform themselves to the forms prescribed by the
Establishment, and shall attend the churches of the land; and you
know as well as I do that there be many priests of our faith who
bid their flocks obey this law, and submit themselves to the powers
that be. And yet even with all this I would have restrained myself
from such attendance, knowing that it is an abhorrence unto you,
had there been any other way open to me of hearing the Word of God
or receiving the Blessed Sacrament. But since King James has come
to the throne, the penal laws have been more stringently enforced
against our priests than in the latter days of the Queen. What has
been the result for us? Verily that the priest who did from time to
time minister to us is fled. We are left without help, without
guidance, without teaching, and this when the clouds of peril and
trouble are like to darken more and more about our path."
"And what of that, rash boy? Would you think to lessen the peril by
tampering with the things of the Evil One; by casting aside those
rules and doctrines in which you both have been reared, and
consorting with the subverters of the true faith?"
"But I cannot see that they are subverters of the faith," answered
the youth hotly. "That is where the kernel of the matter lies. I
have heard their preachings. I have talked with my cousins at the
Chase, who know what their doctrine is."
But at these words the old man fairly gnashed his teeth in fury; he
made a rush at his son and took him by the collar of his doublet,
shaking him in a frenzy of rage.
"So!" he cried, "so! Now we get at the whole heart of the matter.
You have been learning heresy from those false Trevlyns at the
Chase--those renegade, treacherous, time-serving Trevlyns, who are
a disgrace to their name and their station! Wretched boy! have I
not warned you times and again to have no dealings with those evil
relatives? Kinsmen they may be, but kinsmen who have disgraced the
name they bear. I would I had Richard Trevlyn here beneath my hand
now, that I might stuff his false doctrine down his false throat to
choke him withal! And to think that he has corrupted my son, as if
the rearing of his own heretic brood was not enough!"
Cuthbert was unable to speak; his father's hand pressed too tightly
on his throat. He did not struggle or resist. Those were days when
sons--ay, and daughters too--were used to receiving severe
chastisement from the parental hand without murmur: and Nicholas
Trevlyn had not been one to spare the rod where his son had been
concerned. His wrath seemed to rise as he felt the slight form of
the lad sway beneath his strong grasp. Surely that slim stripling
could be reduced to obedience; but the lesson must be a sharp one,
for plainly the poison was working, and had already produced
disastrous results.
"Miserable boy!" cried Nicholas, his eyes blazing in their
cavernous hollows, "the time has come when this matter must be
settled betwixt us twain. Swear that thou wilt go no more to the
churches of the Protestant faction, be the laws what they may;
swear that thou wilt hold no more converse on matters of religion
with thy cousins at the Chase--swear these things with a solemn and
binding oath, and all may yet be well. Refuse, and thou shalt yet
learn, as thou hast not learned before, what the wrath of a wronged
and outraged father can be!"
Petronella, the dark-eyed girl, who had all this while been
crouching back in her high-backed chair in an attitude of shrinking
terror, now sprang suddenly towards her brother, crying: "O
Cuthbert, Cuthbert! prithee do not anger him more!
"Father, O dear sir, let but him go this once! He does not
willingly anger you; he does but--"
"Peace, foolish girl, and begone! This is no time for woman's
whining. Thy brother and I can settle this business betwixt us
twain. But stay, go thou to my room and fetch thence the strong
whip wherewith I chastise the unruly hounds. Those who disobey like
dogs must be beaten like dogs.
"But, an thou wilt swear to do my bidding in the future, and avoid
all pestilent controversy with those false scions of thy house, thy
chastisement shall be light. Defy me, and thou shalt feel the full
weight of my arm as thou hast never felt it before."
Petronella had never seen her father so angry in all her life
before. True, he had always been a harsh, stern man, an unloving
father, a captious tyrant in his own house. But there had been
limits to his anger. It had taken more generally the form of sullen
brooding than of wild wrath, and the irritation and passion which
had lately been increasing visibly in him was something
comparatively new.
Of late, however, there had been growing friction between Cuthbert
and his father. The youth, who had remained longer a boy in his
secluded life than he would have done had his lot been cast in a
wider sphere, was awakening at last to the stirrings of manhood
within him, and was chafing against the fetters, both physical and
spiritual, laid upon him by the life he was forced to lead through
the tyrannical will of his father. He was beginning, in a
semi-conscious fashion, to pant for freedom, and to rebel against
the harsh paternal yoke.
When a struggle of wills commences, the friction continues a long
while before the spark is produced; but when some unwonted contest
has ignited this, the flame often bursts out in wonderful fury, and
the whole scene is thence forward changed.
If the old man's blood was up today, Cuthbert's was no less so. He
shook himself free for a moment from his father's grasp and stood
before him, tall, upright, indignant, no fear in his face, but a
deep anger and pain; and his words were spoken with great emphasis
and deliberation.
"I will swear nothing of all that. I claim for myself the right of
a man to judge for myself and act for myself. I am a boy no longer;
I have reached man's estate. I will be threatened and intimidated
no longer by any man, even though he be my father. I am ready and
willing to leave your house this very day. I am weary of the life
here. I would fain carve out fortune for myself. It is plain that
we cannot be agreed; wherefore it plainly behoves us to part. Let
me then go, but let me go in peace. It may be when I return to
these doors you may have learned to think more kindly of me."
But the very calmness of these words only stung Nicholas to greater
fury. He had in full force that inherent belief, so deeply rooted
in the minds of many of the sons of Rome, that conviction as well
as submission could be compelled--could be driven into the minds
and consciences of recalcitrant sons and daughters by sheer force
and might. Gnashing his teeth in fury, he sprang once more upon his
son, winding his strong arms about him, and fairly lifting him from
the ground in his paroxysm of fury.
"Go! ay, we will see about that. Go, and carry your false stories
and falser thoughts out into the world, and pollute others as you
yourself have been polluted! we will think of that anon. Here thou
art safe in thy father's care, and it will be well to think further
ere we let so rabid a heretic stray from these walls. Wretched boy!
the devil himself must sure have entered into thee. But fiends have
been exorcised before now. It shall not be the fault of Nicholas
Trevlyn if this one be not quickly forced to take flight!"
All this while the infuriated man had been partly dragging, partly
carrying his son to a dreary empty room in the rear of the
dilapidated old house inhabited by Nicholas and his children. It
was a vault-like apartment, and the roof was upheld in the centre
by a stout pillar such as one sees in the crypts of churches, and
suspended round this pillar were a pair of manacles and a leather
belt. Cuthbert had many times been tied up to this pillar before,
his hands secured above his head in the manacles, and his body
firmly fastened to the pillar by the leather thong. Sometimes he
had been left many hours thus secured, till he had been ready to
drop with exhaustion. Sometimes he had been cruelly beaten by his
stern sire in punishment for some boyish prank or act of
disobedience. Even the gentle and timid Petronella had more than
once been fastened to the pillar for a time of penance, though the
manacles and the whip had been spared to her. The place was even
now full of terrors for her--a gruesome spot, always dim and dark,
always full of lurking horrors. Her eyes dilated with agony and
fear as she beheld her brother fastened up--not before his stout
doublet had been removed--and her knees almost gave way beneath her
as her father turned sharply upon her and said: "Where is the whip,
girl?"
It was seldom that the maiden had the courage to resist her, stern
father; but today, love for her brother overcoming every other
feeling, she suddenly sank on her knees before him, clasping her
hands in piteous supplication, as she cried, with tears streaming
down her face: "O father, sweet father, spare him this time! for
the love of heaven visit not his misdoings upon him! Let me but
talk to him; let me but persuade him! Oh, do not treat him so
harshly! Indeed he may better be won by love than driven by blows!"
But Nicholas roughly repulsed the girl, so that she almost fell as
he brushed past her.
"Tush, girl! thou knowest not what thou sayest. Disobedience must
be flogged out of the heretic spawn. I will have no son of mine
sell himself to the devil unchecked. A truce to such tears and vain
words! I will none of them. And take heed that thine own turn comes
not next. I will spare neither son nor daughter that I find
tampering with the pestilent doctrines of heretics!"
So saying, the angry man strode away himself in search of the
weapon of chastisement, and whilst Petronella sobbed aloud in her
agony of pity, Cuthbert looked round with a strange smile to say:
"Do not weep so bitterly, my sister; it will soon be over, and it
is the last beating I will ever receive at his hands. This settles
it--this decides me. I leave this house this very night, and I
return no more until I have won my right to be treated no longer as
a slave and a dog."
"Alas, my brother! wilt thou really go?"
"Ay, that will I, and this very night to boot."
"This night! But I fear me he will lock thee in this chamber here."
"I trust he may; so may I the better effect my purpose. Listen,
sister, for he will return right soon, and I must be brief. I have
been shut up here before, and dreaming of some such day as this, I
have worked my way through one of yon stout bars to the window; and
it will fall out now with a touch. Night falls early in these dark
November days. When the great clock in the tower of the Chase tolls
eight strokes, then steal thou from the house bearing some victuals
in a wallet, and my good sword and dagger and belt. Meet me by the
ruined chantry where we have sat so oft. I will then tell thee all
that is in my heart--for which time lacks me to speak now.
"Hist! there is his returning step. Leave me now, and weep not. I
care naught for hard blows; I have received too many in my time.
But these shall be the last!"
Petronella, trembling in every limb, shrank silently away in the
shadows as her father approached, the sight of his grim, stern face
and the cruel-looking weapon in his hands bringing quick thrills of
pain and pity to her gentle heart. Petronella was a very tender
floweret to have been reared amidst so much hardness and sorrow. It
was wonderful that she had lived through the helpless years of
infancy (her mother had died ere she had completed her second year)
with such a father over her, or that having so lived she had
preserved the sweetness and clinging softness of temperament which
gave to her such a strange charm--at least in the opinion of one.
Doubtless she owed much of her well being to the kindly care of an
old deaf and dumb woman, the only servant in that lonely old house,
who had entered it to nurse the children's mother through her last
illness, and had stayed on almost as a matter of course, receiving
no wage for her untiring service, but only the coarse victuals that
all shared alike, and such scanty clothing as was absolutely
indispensable.
To this old crone Petronella fled with white face and tearful eyes,
as the sound of those terrible blows smote upon her ears with the
whistling noise that well betrayed the force with which they were
dealt. She quickly made the faithful old creature aware of what was
going on, and her sympathy was readily aroused on behalf of the
sufferer. The dumb request for food was also understood and
complied with. No doubt there had been times before when the girl
had crept with bread and meat in her apron to the solitary captive,
who was shut up alone without food till he should come to a better
mind.
Of Cuthbert's intended flight she made no attempted revelation. She
must act now, and explain later, if she could ever make the old
woman understand, that her brother had fled, and had not been done
to death by his hard-hearted father.
Supper was over. It had been at the close of that meal that the
explosion had taken place. She would not be called upon to meet her
father again that day. Fleeing up the broken stone staircase just
as his feet were heard returning from the vaulted room, she heard
him bang to the door of the living room before she dared to steal
into the little bare chamber where her brother slept, and where all
his worldly possessions were stored.
The old Gate House was a strange habitation. Formerly merely the
gateway to the Castle, which had once reared its proud head upon
the crest of the hill to the westward, it had but scant
accommodation for a family--one living room below, flanked on one
side by the kitchen, and on the other by the vaulted chamber, once
possibly a guardroom, but so bitterly cold and damp now that it was
never used save for such purposes as had been witnessed there that
evening. A winding, broken stone stairway led upwards to a few very
narrow chambers above of irregular shape, and all lighted by
loophole windows deeply splayed. The lowest of these was the place
where Nicholas slept, and there was a slight attempt at furniture
and comfort; but the upper chambers, where Petronella and Cuthbert
retired out of the way of their father's sullen and morose temper,
were bare of all but actual necessities, and lacked many things
which would be numbered amongst essentials in later days. The stone
floors had not even a carpeting of rushes, the pallet beds lay on
the hard stone floor, and only the girl possessed a basin and ewer
for washing. Cuthbert was supposed to perform his ablutions in the
water of the moat without, or at the pump in the yard.
But Petronella had small notion of the hardness of her life. She
had known no other, and only of late had she begun to realize that
other girls were more gently reared and tended. Since the family
had come to live at the Chase--which had only happened within the
past year--her ideas had begun to enlarge; but so far this had not
taught her discontent with her surroundings.
She knew that her father had fled to the Gate House as a place of
retirement in the hour of his danger and need, and that nobody had
denied his right to remain there, though the whole property was in
the possession of Sir Richard Trevlyn, the nephew of her morose
parent. Nicholas, however, as may have been already gathered, bore
no goodwill towards his nephew, and would fain have hindered his
children from so much as exchanging a word with their kinsfolks.
But blood is thicker than water, and the young naturally consort
together. Nicholas had married so late in life that his children
were much about the same age as those of his nephew--indeed the
Trevlyns of the Chase were all older than Petronella. Sir Richard
had striven to establish friendly relations with his uncle when he
had first brought his family to the Chase, and had only given up
the attempt after many rebuffs. He encouraged his children to show
kindness to their cousins, as they called each other, and since
that day a ray of sunshine had stolen into Petronella's life,
though she was almost afraid to cherish it, lest it should only be
withdrawn again.
As she hurried to the tryst that evening, this fear was only second
to the bitter thought of parting with Cuthbert. Yet she did not
wish him to stay. Her father's wrath and suspicion once fully
aroused, no peace could be hoped for or looked for. Terribly as she
would miss him, anything was better than such scenes as the one of
today. Cuthbert was no longer a child; he was beginning to think
and reason and act for himself. It was better he should fly before
worse had happened; only the girl could not but wonder what her own
life would be like if, after his departing, her stern father should
absolutely forbid her seeing or speaking to her cousins again.
She knew he would gladly do it; knew that he hated and grudged the
few meetings and greetings that did pass between them from time to
time. Any excuse would gladly be caught at as a pretext for an
absolute prohibition of such small overtures, and what would life
be like, she wondered with a little sob, if she were to lose
Cuthbert, and never to see Philip?
Her brother was at the trysting place first. She could not see his
face, but could distinguish the slight figure seated upon the
crumbling fragment of the wall. He was very still and quiet, and
she paused as she drew near, wondering if he had not heard her
light footfall upon the fallen leaves.
"Is that thou, my sister?" asked a familiar voice, though feeble
and hollow in its tones. The girl sprang quickly to his side.
"Yes, Cuthbert, it is I; and I have brought all thou biddest me,
and as much beside as I could make shift to carry. Alack, Cuthbert
are you sorely hurt? I heard that cruel whip!"
"Think no more of that! I will think no more myself once the smart
be past. Think of the freedom thy brother will enjoy; would that
thou couldst share it, sweet sister! I like not faring thus forth
and leaving thee, but for the nonce there be no other way.
"Petronella, I know thou wouldst ask whither I go and what I do.
And that I scarce know myself as yet. But sitting here in the dark
there has come a new purpose, a new thought to my mind. What if I
were to set myself to the discovery of the lost treasure of Trevlyn
Chase?"
The girl started in the darkness, and laid her hand on her
brother's arm.
"Ah, Cuthbert, that lost treasure! Would that thou couldst find it!
But how canst thou hope to do so when so many besides have failed?"
"That is not the fashion in which men think when they mean to
triumph, my sister," said Cuthbert, and she knew by his voice that
he was smiling. "How this thing may be done I know not. Where the
long-lost treasure be hid I know not, nor that I may ever be the
one to light on it. But this I do know, that it is somewhere; that
some hand buried it; that even now some living soul may know the
secret of the hiding place. Petronella, hast thou ever thought of
it? Hast thou ever wondered if our father may know aught of it?"
"Our father! nay, Cuthbert; but he would be the first to show the
place and claim his share of spoil."
"I know not that. He hates Sir Richard. Methinks he loved not his
own brother, the good knight's father. He was in the house what
time the treasure vanished. Might he not have had some hand in the
mystery?"
The girl shook her head again doubtfully.
"Nay, how can I say? Yet methinks our father, who sorely laments
his poverty and dependence for a home upon Sir Richard's kindness,
would no longer live at the old Gate House had he riches hidden
away upon which he might lay his hand. Nay, Cuthbert, methinks thou
art not on the right track in thinking of him. But I do not rightly
know the story of that lost treasure."
"Marry, nor I neither. I have heard our father rave of it. I have
heard a word here, a whisper there, but never a full account of the
matter. But that there is some great treasure lost or made away
with all men who know aught of the Trevlyns know well. And if, as
all affirm, this same treasure is but buried in some hiding place,
the clue to which none possesses, why should not I find it? Why
should not I be the man at last to track and to discover it?"
Why not indeed? Petronella, full of ardent youthful imaginings,
fired instantly with the thought. Why should not her brother do
this thing? Why not indeed? She looked at him with eyes that shone
in the gloom like stars.
"Yes, Cuthbert, be it thine to do what none else has been able. Be
it thine to discover this lost treasure. Would that I could help
thee in that quest! But I can give thee just this one morsel of
counsel. Start not till thou hast been to the Chase and heard all
the story from our cousins there. They will tell thee what there is
to know, and he is twice armed who has this knowledge."
"I will follow thy good counsel, my sister, and commend thee to
their kindly care. And now, let us say farewell, and be brief; for
such moments do but wring the heart and take the manliness from
one. Farewell, and farewell, my sweetest sister. Heaven be thy
guide and protector; and be sure of one thing, that if I live I
will see thee soon again, and that if I have success in my search
thou and I will rejoice in it together."