ct bloody chastisement on
those who had been the enemies of herself and of her Protestant
subjects. Even as the Trevlyn brothers had passed through the
streets of the city on their way out, they had been hissed and
hooted and even pelted by the crowd, some amongst which knew well
the part they had played in the recent persecutions. They had been
not a little alarmed by threats and menaces hurled at them even in
the precincts of St. James's, and it had become very plain to them
that they would speedily become the objects of private if not of
public vengeance. That being so, my grandfather was eager and
anxious to return to the Chase, to place his wife and child in some
place of safety; whilst your father's fear was all for the treasure
in gold and plate and valuables stored up in the house, which might
well fall an easy prey to the rapacious hands of spoilers, should
such (as was but too likely) swoop down upon the house to strive to
recover the jewels and gold taken from them when they were helpless
to oppose or resent such spoliation."

"Then it was all laid by at the Chase--all the money and precious
things taken from others?"

"Yes, and a vast quantity of silver and gold plate which had come
into the possession of former Trevlyns ever since the rise of the
family in the early days of the Tudors. The seventh Henry and the
eighth alike enriched our forefathers, and I know not what wealth
was stored up in the treasure room of this house now so drearily
void. But I mind well the story our grandam told us when we were
little children, standing at her knee in the ruddy firelight, of
that night when all this treasure was packed up in great chests and
boxes, and carried at dead of night by trusty servants into the
heart of the forest, and buried beneath a certain giant oak many
times pointed out to us, and well-nigh killed in after years by the
diggings around it in search of the missing hoard. To secure this
treasure, and bury it out of the reach of rapacious and covetous
hands, was the aim and object of that hurried journey taken on the
evening of the Queen's decease. None were in the secret save three
old servants, whose faithful loyalty to the family had been tested
in a thousand different ways. Those three, together with my
grandfather and your father, packed and transported with their own
hands this great treasure into the wood, and there entombed it.
None else knew of that night's work. No other eye saw what was
d