But he would not search tonight; he had the whole summer before him.  Plainly Long Robin was not going to take any immediate step for the removal of the treasure; and during the last hours a great longing had come upon Cuthbert to see Petronella again.  He was within ten miles of his old home now, and the thoughts of his sister had been mingling with these other thoughts of the lost treasure.  Surely he could find his way to the Gate House from this lonely dell, and once there, by making a signal at his sister’s window, he could advise her of his presence and gain a stolen interview.

So taking his bearings from the moon, he struck boldly across the lonely waste of forest that lay between him and his former home, and soon found himself tramping over the ling and moss of the high ridge of common land with which the woody tracts of the forest were frequently interspersed.

As he thus tramped the words of the verses began singing in his head:  “Three times three—­o’er ling and moss.”  What was that three times three?  The question mingled with his dreams of his sister, and suddenly the thought came to him, Could the three times three be miles—­miles from the giant oak from beneath which the treasure had been taken?  Three times three—­it might well be so.  The distance was surely about nine miles.  The spot where the Trevlyns had hid their treasure lay directly in Cuthbert’s way as he marched steadily towards the Gate House.  He saw the giant oak rise up before him in the moonlight, and he hastened to the spot and stood beneath the overhanging branches.

Standing beneath it with the oak behind him, he looked straight along the way he had come across the bog and moss.  Surely there were nine miles, and little more or less, between the one spot and the other.  And again, with the oak behind there was a beech at his right hand, and straight before him the road to the pixies’ dell.  Well, it might not be much, yet it seemed like a link in the chain.  Esther had perchance heard Robin mutter these numbers in his troubled sleep.  Surely he had been thinking or dreaming of that long nine miles’ tramp, and the words he had used to direct the men whom afterwards he had foully and treacherously murdered!

“I am on the track!  I am on the track!” cried Cuthbert exultantly, as he pursued his way.  “The secret lies hid in the pixies’ dell.  Surely if I have learned as much as that, I cannot be long in finding out the whole!”

And with thoughts of his sister, of Cherry, of Kate, warm in his heart, Cuthbert sped gaily along in the direction of his old home.

Midnight struck from the clock in the turret of Trevlyn Chase as the youth approached the gray walls of the old Gate House.  How grim and hoary it looked in the white moonlight!  Something of a faint shiver of repulsion ran through Cuthbert’s frame as he looked upon the familiar outline of the building.  Was it possible that all but the few last months of his life had been spent there?  It seemed to him that the old life was already like a dim and distant dream, and that the fuller life he had enjoyed since leaving was the only one that had any reality about it.