The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn: A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot. Everett-Green Evelyn
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 together no small treasure whilst this traffic in treachery had been going on, and in many cases the valuables of the victims they had betrayed to death had passed into the keeping of the betrayer.
"Oh, it is a detestable thing to think of!" cried the girl, stamping her foot. "No wonder the judgment of God fell upon that unhallowed treasure, and that it was taken from its possessors! No wonder it was doomed to lie hidden away till those who had gotten it had passed to their last account, and could never enjoy the ill-gotten gain. And they were punished too-ay, they were well punished. They were fined terrible sums; they had to give back sums equal to the spoil they had filched from others. Thy father, as thou knowest, was ruined; and we still feel that pinch of poverty that will be slow to depart altogether from our house. Yet it serves us right-it serves us right! It is meet that the children should suffer for the sins of their parents. I have not complained, and I will not complain;" and Kate threw back her head, whilst her eyes flashed with the stress of her feeling.
"But the treasure?" questioned Cuthbert, eager to know more; "I have not yet heard how it was lost."
Thus recalled to her subject, Kate took up her narrative again.
"You doubtless know that Queen Mary died in November of the year of grace fifteen hundred and fifty-eight. In that year, some months earlier, my father was born, and at the time of the proclamation of the new Queen he was a tender infant. My grandfather was in London about the Court, and his wife and child were here in this house-the sumptuous mansion he and his father had built-not dreaming of harm or ill. They had not heard of the death of one Queen or the proclamation of the other till one dark winter's night when, just as the household were about to retire to bed, my grandfather and your father, Cuthbert, arrived at the house, their faces pale with anxiety and apprehension, their clothes stained with travel; the state of both riders and horses showing the speed with which they had travelled, and betraying plainly that something urgent had happened. The news was quickly told. Queen Mary was dead. Bonfires in London streets were blazing in honour of Elizabeth. The Protestants were everywhere in a transport of joy and triumph. The Papists were trembling for their lives and for their fortunes. No one knew the policy of the new Queen. All felt that it was like enough she would inflict 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 done. They worked the whole night through, and by the tardy dawn all was done, and even the soil of the forest so cleverly arranged that none could guess at the existence of that deep grave. And who would guess the secret of that tangled forest? Even were it thought that the gold and silver had been hid, who would have such skill as to guess the spot, and go and filch it thence? And yet it must have been carried away full soon. For Nicholas Trevlyn, in his anxious greed, visited the spot not many weeks later-visited it by stealth, for he and his brother were alike in hiding, waiting for the first burst of vengeful fury to be over-and he found it gone! He thought on the first survey that all was well; but on more closely examining the ground his heart misgave him, for it appeared to him as if the soil had been moved. With anxious haste he began to dig, and soon his spade struck the lid of one of the chests. For a moment he breathed again; but he was impelled to carry his search farther. He uncovered the chest and raised the lid-it was empty! In a wild fear and fury he dug again and again, and with the same result. Every chest or box was in its place, but every one was empty! The treasure had been spirited away by some spoiler's hand; the treasure of Trevlyn was lost from that night forward!"
Cuthbert was leaning forward drinking all in with eager curiosity.
"My father discovered the loss-my father?"
Kate nodded her head, and seemed to divine the thought in his mind, for she answered as if he had spoken it aloud.
"We have all thought of that. I know it is sometimes in my father's mind as he looks at his kinsman's grim face; but our grand sire never suspected him for a moment-nay, he vowed he was certain he had had no part nor lot in the matter. For there was nothing but accord between the brothers; they shared good and evil hap alike. It was with his son, my father, who abjured the old faith and became a Protestant, that your father picked a quarrel. He hated his brother's wife, it is true; but he never appeared to hate his brother. And he suffered more than