"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 any in the years that followed.
He lost his all, and has been a ruined man since. If he had a
secret hoard, sure he would scarce live the life he does now."

"I know not. It seems scarce like; and yet I can never answer for
my father's moods, they are so wild and strange. But there is yet
one thing more I would ask. You spoke awhile ago of gipsies--of a
hatred they bore to our house. Tell me of that, I pray. Might it
have somewhat to do with the stealing of the treasure?"

"That is what some have thought, though with what truth none can
say. The story of that is soon told. Many long years agone now, the
Trevlyn whose portrait hangs below in the hall--our great
grandfather--gave sentence upon an old gipsy woman that she should
be burnt as a witch. Men said of her that she had overlooked their
children and their cattle: that the former had become sick or
silly, and that the latter had incontinently died of diseases none