us, albeit not
without due search and travail and labour. O Cuthbert, thy words
rejoice me. Would I were a man, to fare forth with thee on the
quest! What wilt thou do? How wilt thou begin? And how canst thou
search for the lost treasure an thou goest to thine uncle's house
in London?"

"I must fain do that for a while," answered Cuthbert; "I dare not
linger so close to my father's home at this time. Moreover, the
winter is fast coming upon us, when the ground will be deep in
snow, and no man not bred to it could make shift to live in the
forest. To London must I go first. I trow the time will not be
wasted; for I will earn money in honest fashion, that I may have
the wherewithal to live when I go to seek this lost treasure.

"And now, my cousin, tell me all the tale. I know not rightly how
the treasure was lost, and I have never heard of the gipsy folks or
their hatred to our house. It behoves me to know all ere I embark
on the quest."

"Yea, verily; and I will tell thee all I know. Thou knowest well
that of old the Trevlyns were stanch sons to the Church of Rome,
and that in the days of Bloody Mary, as men call her now (and well
she merits the name), the Trevlyns helped might and main in hunting
down wretched Protestants and sending them to prison and the
stake?"

"I have heard my father speak of these things," answered Cuthbert,
with a light shudder, calling to mind his father's fierce and
terrible descriptions of the scenes he had witnessed and taken part
in during those short but fearful years of Mary's reign, "but I
knew not it had aught to do with the loss of the treasure."

"It had this much to do," answered Kate, "that my grandfather and
your father, who of course were brothers, were so vehemently hated
by the Protestant families, many of whose members had been betrayed
to death by their means--your father in particular was relentless
in his efforts to hunt down and spy out miserable victims--that
when the Queen was known to be dead, and her successor and
Protestant sister had been proclaimed in London, the Trevlyns felt
that they had cause to tremble for their own safety. They had
stirred up relentless enmity by their own relentless conduct, and
the sudden turn in fortune's wheel had given these enemies the
upper hand."

"Ah!" breathed Cuthbert, "I begin to see."

"The Trevlyns had not served the Bloody Queen and her minions
without reward," continued Kate, with flashing eyes; "they had
heaped tog