The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn: A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot

by Evelyn Everett-Green

"I trow that has been enow," spoke a voice nigh at hand, though the speaker was invisible owing to the thick growth of bushes. "If that sound were caused by aught but a rabbit or wildcat, I wager the hardy traveller has taken to his heels and fled. But I misdoubt me that it was anything human. There be sounds and to spare in the forest at night. It is long since I have been troubled by visitors to this lone spot. The pixies and I have the dell to ourselves. Ha, ha!"

"Robin's voice again!" whispered Cuthbert to himself, creeping forward with the cautious, snake-like movement that he had learned when snaring birds or rabbits to furnish the scanty larder at the Gate House. He advanced by slow degrees, and soon gained what he desired--a view of his quarry and of the heart of the dell.

In the fading light he could see both plainly. Long Robin was seated upon a low stone wall overgrown with moss, that seemed to be built around a well; for it was of circular construction, and to the listener was borne the faint sound of running water, though the sound seemed to come from the very heart of the earth. Round this well was a space of smooth greensward--sward that appeared to have been untouched for centuries. All around, the sides of the dell rose up, covered with a thick growth of wood and copse. It was a lovely spot in all truth, but lonely to the verge of desolation. Cuthbert dimly remembered having heard fragments of legends respecting a pixies' dell in the heart of the forest--a dell avoided by all, for that no man who ventured in came forth alive. Most likely this was the place; most likely the legend of fear surrounding it was due to some exaggerated version of old Robin's ghastly crime in bygone years.

Cuthbert gazed and gazed with a sense of weird fascination. He fully believed that in some spot not many yards from where he stood lay hidden the lost treasure of Trevlyn, and that the secret of that resting place remained known to one man only in the whole world; and that was the man before him!

A wild impulse seized Cuthbert to spring upon that bowed figure, and, holding a knife to the man's throat, to demand a full revelation of that secret as the price of life. Perhaps had he not seen but an hour before how upright, powerful, and stalwart that bending figure could be, he would have done it then and there. But with that memory clear in his mind, together with his knowledge of the perfectly unscrupulous character of the gipsy, he felt that such a step would be the sheerest madness; and after gazing his fill at the motionless figure, he softly crept away once more.

He lay hidden in the bushes till he heard Long Robin leave the dell and go crashing through the underwood with heavy steps, cursing as he went the two women who stood between him and his desire. It was plain from his muttered words that he was going back to the camp now. Plainly he had paid his visit to the hoard and found all safe and undisturbed. Cuthbert was more and more convinced that the treasure lay here, as Esther had always believed; and it would be strange indeed, being so near, if he could not find it in time.

But he would not search tonight; he had the whole summer before him. Plainly Long Robin was not going to take any immediate step for the removal of the treasure; and during the last hours a great longing had come upon Cuthbert to see Petronella again. He was within ten miles of his old home now, and the thoughts of his sister had been mingling with these other thoughts of the lost treasure. Surely he could find his way to the Gate House from this lonely dell, and once there, by making a signal at his sister's window, he could advise her of his presence and gain a stolen interview.

So taking his bearings from the moon, he struck boldly across the lonely waste of forest that lay between him and his former home, and soon found himself tramping over the ling and moss of the high ridge of common land with which the woody tracts of the forest were frequently interspersed.

As he thus tramped the words of the verses began singing in his head: "Three times three--o'er ling and moss." What was that three times three? The question mingled with his dreams of his sister, and suddenly the thought came to him, Could the three times three be miles--miles from the giant oak from beneath which the treasure had been taken? Three times three--it might well be so. The distance was surely about nine miles. The spot where the Trevlyns had hid their treasure lay directly in Cuthbert's way as he marched steadily towards the Gate House. He saw the giant oak rise up before him in the moonlight, and he hastened to the spot and stood beneath the overhanging branches.

Standing beneath it with the oak behind him, he looked straight along the way he had come across the bog and moss. Surely there were nine miles, and little more or less, between the one spot and the other. And again, with the oak behind there was a beech at his right hand, and straight before him the road to the pixies' dell. Well, it might not be much, yet it seemed like a link in the chain. Esther had perchance heard Robin mutter these numbers in his troubled sleep. Surely he had been thinking or dreaming of that long nine miles' tramp, and the words he had used to direct the men whom afterwards he had foully and treacherously murdered!