"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